


Propunk AU Drabbles

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Homestuck Fusion, Alternate Universe - Middle School, Alternate Universe - Music Store, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Retail, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Writer, Arson, Assassins & Hitmen, Cell Phones, Clubbing, Crimes & Criminals, Eldritch, F/F, Fae & Fairies, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fencing, Fight Club - Freeform, Firewatch, First Dates, Florists, House Party, I don't know if it counts as a fight club but that was the prompt so here we are, Ice Cream Parlors, Mechanics, Motorcycles, Single Parents, Sirens, Skateboarding, Taxis, Those two tags next to each other are certainly something, Vampire Hunters, Zoo, art gallery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:40:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 51
Words: 95,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14204250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Folks, they're gay.





	1. Mechanics

“She’s got  _arm muscles_ ,” Sarah says.

Cosima, on the other end of the line, loudly exhales; Sarah listens to a plume of smoke whistle maybe an inch away from her phone. “Dude,” she says, eloquently.

“She looks like a bloody–” Sarah starts, doesn’t know how to finish, collapses on her bed. She is still covered in engine grease. She is still wearing this stupid fucking jumpsuit. “Cos, she’s got bloody lipstick on. Who starts work at a bloody  _mechanic’s_ –”

“Dude.”

“Hair all bloody – you know–”

“ _Dude_.”

“Cos she got a smear of oil on her face and I’m gonna – if you say dude again I swear I’m comin’ over to your apartment and rippin’ the bloody joint out of your hand.”

Silence.

“Bro,” Cosima says.

“You’re the worst.”

“You guys should have sex,” Cosima says.

“Why are you even my best friend.”

“Because I’m the only lesbian you know.”

Sarah considers this. “Shit,” she says.

“Except the new mechanic.”

Sarah closes her eyes. “She’s not gay,” she says.

“Dude. She’s a mechanic and she showed up wearing lipstick. Q E friggin’ D.”

Sarah kicks off her shoes; they fly across the room. “God she’s hot,” she says.

“Dude,” Cosima says dreamily.

“Piss off,” Sarah says, and hangs up.

* * *

…

She really is hot, though. 

Her name is Rachel, and Sarah knows this because thanks to those five years of shitty experience at this shitty job, Sarah gets to be the one to train her.

Rachel underneath a car: unfair. Just overall totally unfair. What the fuck. 

“How the hell’d you even end up here,” Sarah says uncomfortably. She’s banging a wrench against her knee, watching Rachel fiddle away underneath some shitty Toyota and hoping that she doesn’t screw anything up. Sarah really shouldn’t be the one to train. She does everything by instinct and she can’t explain the workings of cars for shit.

Rachel rolls out from underneath the car, sits up. Her hair is slightly tousled and there’s sweat on her face and neck. Sarah runs a hand through her own hair, feels something smear into it, winces.

“I’m going through a rebellious phase,” Rachel says, idly fixing the collar of her navy-blue jumpsuit.

“At, what, twenty-six?”

Rachel blinks languidly. “I was otherwise occupied as a teenager,” she says. “I have a late start.”

“Well, shit,” Sarah says, “if you need advice.”

A smile blooms across Rachel’s face, slow and sweet and savage. “I was hoping you’d have some to offer.”

* * *

“She didn’t,” Cosima says.

“No,” Sarah says. “She really did.“

“Did you make out with her,” Cosima says, voice bright and way too invested over the line.

“I panicked, alright?” Sarah says. “I told her where to get cheap shots.”

“Did you say you’d go with her?”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah groans. “No, I didn’t.”

“Holy shit. You’re useless.”

“I  _know_.”

“Well,” Cosima says wisely, “you’ve got time.”

“We’re booked together on every bloody shift.”

Sarah can  _hear_  Cosima smiling. “Good.”

* * *

The thing is, the garage doesn’t get enough business for both of them to work at once. So either Sarah curses out some piece of shit’s heater valves and then has to see Rachel  _smirking_  at her, or she has to watch Rachel jack up a car and change out the tires and lift heavy shit and get smeared with grease and who knows what. That’s  _Sarah’s_ shit. She can’t deal with it all over Rachel Duncan, who sometimes wears expensive watches that Sarah can see when Rachel rolls up the sleeves of her jumpsuit. She can’t deal with it.

But she manages. She takes long, hot showers every day and she manages her walking bloody wet dream of a coworker, it’s fine.

Rachel asks Sarah questions about the best places to get a tattoo – like best tattoo parlors and also like best  _places on her body_  – and questions about drugs and clubs and Sarah feels like Rachel’s playing a joke on her. Like this is all a big joke. Rachel never looks hungover, never mentions actually  _getting_  a tattoo, just asks Sarah endless questions with that same curled-up smile and those same weirdly bright eyes. 

Now she’s idly scrubbing oil away from her nailbeds over at their nasty counter while Sarah swears her way through tightening a gasket–

“Gay bars,” Rachel says, and Sarah drops a wrench on her face.

“ _Shit_.”

“I’ve never frequented them,” Rachel says, frown audible in her voice, “but I’d assume there have to be  _some_  slightly more reputable places to meet women in this city. What’s your experience.”

“Hand me a fastener,” Sarah says, to buy time as she tries to decide between  _you can’t decide to kiss girls to rebel against Daddy, Rachel, what the fuck_ and  _you don’t need a gay bar when I’m right here_. She can’t do the second one. She absolutely can’t do the second one, even though she wants to.

Rachel’s hand brushes against hers. It didn’t have that many callouses a few weeks ago, and Sarah gets distracted thinking about that, and now she’s holding a fastener. Great. She checks the loading and listens to Rachel’s patient, expectant silence.

“Just get a bloody tattoo,” Sarah says. “Start a fight at a club. Easier ways to get into shit than playin’ gay, yeah?”

“I’m rarely interested in the easy way of doing anything,” Rachel says.

Sarah drops the fastener. The gasket dribbles a little on her face, spitefully, as she leaves it behind to look at Rachel. “Rachel,” she says. “I’m not – I’m not helpin’ you with that.”

“Why not,” Rachel says, frowning. She takes the rag she was using on her fingernails and tips Sarah’s chin up with one hand, starts wiping off Sarah’s face. Mostly she’s just smearing everything around. All of her fingers are stained black with dirt and oil; it really, really shouldn’t be hot.

Sarah swallows. “’cause,” she says. Her voice is a terrible, embarrassing rasp.

“If I was interested in doing things the easy way,” Rachel says conversationally, “I would be living in a penthouse apartment with the man my parents have been trying to get me to marry since the age of sixteen. I would  _not_  be working in a garage, putting in an absolutely insane amount of effort attempting to flirt with my idiot coworker.”

She lowers the cloth. “As I said,” she says, “I’m not interested in the easy way.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. She watches Rachel’s face flicker with – oh holy shit she’s nervous. Oh shit. Oh holy shit.

“Oh shit,” Sarah says.

Rachel tenses up like a feral cat in an alleyway, one second from the spring.

“The second you started working here,” Sarah growls, and leans forward to crush her lips against Rachel’s. Rachel smells like sweat and hot metal and faintly, underneath that, something delicate and floral that doesn’t belong here. Rachel doesn’t belong here – but her hands feel right clenching in the front of Sarah’s jumpsuit, pulling her close so they can keep the kiss going and going and going. Sarah nips at Rachel’s soft red lip. She must be smearing the lipstick everywhere; good.

Rachel leans back. “Gay bars,” she says. “You’re taking me to one. We’re going to go dancing.”

“God, yeah,” Sarah groans, and presses her mouth to the space between Rachel’s chin and throat. She kisses her way down. “Did you really get a tattoo,” she tells the flickerbeat of Rachel’s pulse.

“Find out,” Rachel says faintly, and Sarah grins.


	2. Music store

“You gonna buy somethin’ today?” says the girl behind the counter at the local music shop. Realistically Rachel should be calling her “Sarah,” since that’s what her nametag says, but she can’t bring herself to do that.

“Possibly,” Rachel says. “Have you bought a grand piano yet?”

“I keep tellin’ you we don’t go for that shit,” says the girl whose name is Sarah. “You’re lucky we’ve got keyboards.”

“Am I.”

“Yeah.” She’s hopped the counter by now. Rachel takes unrealistic amounts of pride whenever she gets this girl to abandon her post in the corner of CRASH’s main room. God, Rachel has a scale she can use to measure her success at CRASH. She should really call this girl Sarah, at least in her own head.

“We also don’t have violins,” Sarah calls over her shoulder, wandering over in the direction of the basses. “Since I know you’re gonna ask that next, you bitch.”

“I don’t think it’s that much to expect that–”

“Bullshit. No one’s gonna walk into a store called Crash lookin’ for a bloody  _violin_ , yeah? No one except you, dunno why you even do it. Order one off the bloody Internet, Chrissakes.”

Rachel knows exactly why she keeps coming back to CRASH looking for a violin, and the reason is at least seventy percent comprised of Sarah’s crop tops and the flat muscles of her stomach. Rachel is unforgivable, and she knows this, but anyone would be susceptible; Sarah wears crop tops the vast majority of the time, and it’s horrifyingly unfair.

Sarah is pulling down a bass off the wall and running her hands over it with something loving and familiar. That’s ten percent. Possibly fifteen. Sarah’s hair falls over her face as she strums a few strings, lip sucked contemplatively between her teeth.

“Bloody good PRS,” she says. “You sure you didn’t become someone with good taste in instruments?”

“I maintain that–”

Sarah strums, hard. Rachel’s voice is drowned out in the growl and oh, god, maybe the crop tops are up to seventy-five. She wants to bite Sarah’s neck. 

“–I’m the one with taste,” she finishes, weakly. “Here. You’re a degenerate.”

“Degenerate,” Sarah mutters lowly. She plays a few more idle chords, with her fingers.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Show me your keyboards.”

“We haven’t got any new keyboards,” Sarah says, a knowing smirk at the edge of her mouth. She hangs the bass back and runs a hand through her hair, settles that hand on her hip. (Rachel wants to bite her hip too.) (It’s really only fair.) 

“I’ve forgotten how they work,” Rachel says. This is a flat-out lie.

“Don’t think you have.”

“Isn’t the customer always right?”

Sarah laughs, full-throttle. She tips her head back. She is absolutely unbelievable; she should be a model, or a musician on the cover of every magazine. The fact that she is working behind the counter of a terrible music store whose name is in all capital letters is a criminal offense, and Rachel thanks every day whatever higher power kept Sarah away from everyone else.

“Yeah,” Sarah says affectionately. “Yeah, sure, you’re right.” She makes her easy way over to the worthless keyboards in the corner, spins on one foot to watch Rachel as she goes. “Someone comes in needing new strings, though…”

“Far be it from me to keep you from your duty.”

“Don’t do that shit,” Sarah says. “‘s unfair.”

Rachel blinks. “Pardon.”

Sarah prowls around a keyboard, leans onto the other side of it. “Far be it from me,” she says, in a breathy and unrealistic caricature of Rachel’s voice. 

“That’s not what I sound like.”

“‘s exactly what you sound like, and you know it.” Sarah snags a stool from another keyboard and settles down, raising her eyebrows expectantly at Rachel. “You gonna play me something, then?”

“Only for you,” Rachel says, settling down at the stool and tapping a key. It bleats a tinny note. If Sarah wore actual shirts Rachel would never come back to this terrible store and its absolutely terrible instruments. God damn her.

“You sure make a girl feel special,” Sarah says.

“Likewise,” Rachel says, and plays.


	3. Fencing

It’s just the two of them in the gym again. Everyone else has cleared out – the other members of the fencing club, the instructor, everyone. It’s just Sarah, Rachel, and the sound of their foils clattering together over and over again.

Sarah should really pretend this isn’t her favorite part of the week. She can’t pretend that. She spends six nights in a row not getting into trouble, and then once a week she comes here and utterly thrashes Rachel Duncan in a gymnasium. She could do this all night; she could keep going until the sun comes up.

The tip of Sarah’s sword touches Rachel’s chest; the board lights up; the buzzer goes. Sarah steps back and takes off her mask. The inside of that shit smells like old socks and death. She hates it.

If she’s being honest with herself, she also likes watching Rachel take off her mask. Not for any particular reason or anything.

Rachel takes off her mask; her face is flushed, and pieces of hair stick to her skin. “Again,” she says, voice hoarse.

“Rachel,” Sarah says. “Everyone else is gone. Think we’ve gotta leave, yeah?”

“ _Again_ ,” Rachel says.

Sarah swings her foil back and forth to listen to the sound of it cutting the air. “I’m not putting my mask back on,” she says warily.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Sarah says. She salutes Rachel. Rachel salutes her, quickly, face a stiff board of anger. They start.

Even with Rachel’s mask on, Sarah could pick her fighting style out of a room packed with other fencers. Rachel fences like she ate a rulebook; it shouldn’t work for her, but it does. Her foil is always exactly where it should be. She moves light enough on her feet to make sure that sword stays moving – Sarah privately suspects ballet, but like hell is she going to ask. 

It’s too bad for her that Sarah is better.

Sarah’s foil against Rachel’s torso. The buzzer goes. Sarah steps back – and stops, because she can see Rachel’s face. For once. A wave of black anger takes over Rachel’s eyes, her mouth, her entirety. Then it’s gone. “Point to you,” Rachel says.

Sarah’s already back in position. Rachel echoes her. They’re at it again, except this time Sarah can see Rachel’s face – the bright calculation of her eyes, the way her mouth twitches and sours and tenses every time something doesn’t go the way she wants it to. Besides these things her face is completely still. 

The buzzer goes.

Fuck.

“Point,” Rachel says, and her face lights up. “One all.”

Now Sarah’s fighting stupid, but she can’t help it. It’s so easy to forget that Rachel is a person – Rachel makes it easy, Rachel doesn’t talk to anyone and leaves the second she’s done fighting. She’s just this thing in a mask that is Sarah’s perfect match. She’s the only one Sarah has ever wanted to fight.

But now she’s alive and she’s breathing and she’s beautiful, actually – she looks like her fencing style in a person, precise and sharp and wonderful. Two-one. Three-one. Sarah can’t get a point in; she doesn’t even know what her face is doing.

“Give me a challenge,” Rachel says, at four-one. She looks electric. 

“Yeah?” Sarah says. She  _feels_  electric. She feels like she’s on fire.

“Yes,” Rachel breathes.

And they’re dancing. Rachel’s foil is always exactly where it should be, but Sarah always  _knows_  where Rachel should be. She can mirror Rachel, every single time. They’re a perfect match. They move back and forth, their strikes getting faster and closer and they’re getting closer and someone’s gonna get a bloody eye put out and Sarah sweeps Rachel’s leg and knocks her to the floor.

Rachel actually  _growls_  at her, this feral outraged sound, and Sarah drops on top of her.

“Is this the only way you can win?” Rachel says. “Flagrantly disobeying the–”

Sarah pins her. Rachel goes utterly silent. She looks ridiculous down there in that stupid bulky outfit, the wires trailing from her back to the counter. She looks stupid. Sarah’s heart is screaming fast inside of her chest.

“Give up,” she says, voice rough. “Give me the point.”

Rachel’s eyes are enormous and dark. Her tongue darts out to her lips. “No,” she says.

“Let me win,” Sarah says, leaning in.

“ _No_ ,” Rachel says, and leans in – fast, like a viper strike – and kisses her. 

Rachel doesn’t even kiss one bit like she fights. She kisses like she is inventing kissing right at this very second and she absolutely intends to be the champion of it. Maybe she kisses a little like she fights: she kisses angry. Sarah kisses back angry. They’re both angry, and they should have been doing this  _weeks_  ago. Weeks and weeks and weeks ago.

She leans back, considers. Rachel: flushed and furious. “So,” Sarah says.

Rachel swallows and then settles into something catlike; her eyelids lower. “So,” she echoes.

“I,” Sarah says, and then she hears the buzzer. She blinks – looks down – Rachel has gotten her foil back and has the edge of it pressed neatly to Sarah’s stomach.

“Five,” Rachel says, and shoves the foil a safe distance away. “The victory’s mine.”

“You bitch,” Sarah says. She tries to make the words sound like anything except awe, but can’t quite manage it.

Rachel tilts her head a little bit. “To the victor,” she says.

“That your way of saying you want me to kiss you again.”

“The second part of the saying is  _go the spoils_ , Sarah, but I understand if you haven’t–”

Sarah kisses her again. One-nothing, and the point’s all hers.


	4. CEO/Writer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous asked: Do you have room for one more pointless gay propunk au? Rachel is a very famous and successful CEO that one day decides she wants to write her biography. For a very odd reason, she chose Sarah as her ghostwriter.

“How’d you even find me,” Sarah Manning says. She’s slouched low across from Rachel at this dingy table at this dingy bar in this dingy part of town, hands stuffed into the pockets of her dingy leather jacket, hair a rat’s nest.

“You frequent this establishment,” Rachel says. “It wasn’t difficult.”

“Not what I meant.”

Rachel swirls her wine in its glass. The glass has fingerprints on it – horror – so she doesn’t touch her mouth to it. “A –  _colleague_  – of mine,” she says, “had an Alison Hendrix romance novel. I thought I recognized a twist of phrase. After that…a rabbit hole, perhaps, but I have the resources. You’re a very interesting person, Ms. Manning.”

“You don’t have to say ‘colleague’,” Sarah says, slouching even further in her chair. Her eyes glint, amused. “You can just say you read ‘em. Good shit, yeah? I should know, I wrote it.”

“I didn’t read them.”

“Was it the one with the sex by a dead body or the one with all the bondage? You seem more like a bondage girl, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

“If you’re trying to discourage me, it won’t work,” Rachel says. “Let me be very clear. I know you’re Alison Hendrix, the author of the most stupid and blithering romance novels–” (“ _Hey!_ ”) “–I’ve ever heard of. I know you are  _also_  Cosima Niehaus, the science fiction author. I know you’re Helena X. I know you’re Krystal Goderitch. I know about all of it. Every pen name, every false piece of identification. All of it.”

By the end of the speech, Sarah is very pale. Good. “What do you want,” she says.

Rachel leans back in her chair. “Be me,” she says.

“Don’t think I’ve got a big enough stick to shove up my arse.”

“I’m in need of a biographer,” Rachel says. “I don’t have the time, inclination, or patience. What I  _do_  have is money, and interest in you. Name your price.”

Sarah names it. It’s outrageous.

“Fine.”

Sarah blinks with the obvious surprise of someone who didn’t expect that to work. “What?”

“If you think I’m not willing to call your bluff,” Rachel says, “you’re sadly mistaken.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Sarah breathes, and rolls her eyes, and drums her feet on the floor, and names a slightly more reasonable price. 

Rachel ups it by 20%.

“You really want this,” Sarah says. “Holy shit. You want me to write your autobiography. Christ. I don’t even  _know_ you.”

“I fully trust your capacity to use the Internet. I’ll of course open up any files you need to look at. As I said, I have resources.”

Sarah bangs her fingers on the table, unceremoniously dumps the rest of her whiskey glass down her throat. “Why me.”

“I think you’re interesting,” Rachel says. “I like having interesting things.”

She withdraws her business cards from her purse, pulls one out. “We’ll draw up a contract,” Rachel says. “And let things proceed from there.” She pushes the card across the able. “Are you interested?”

“God,” Sarah says, “yeah.” She takes the card.

* * *

She looks very out of place in Rachel’s office. Rachel likes it. She watches Sarah pace around the white empty marble, hands shoved in her pockets again, and imagines Sarah sitting in front of a computer writing out the complicated knots of bondage rope. It’s a nice image.

“Did your parents love you?” Sarah says, out of nowhere. She picks up a glass paperweight, turns it over and over in her hands.

“Excuse me?”

“Read your Wikipedia page,” Sarah says. “The New Yorker interview, all that shite. All of it starts with the lab fire in 1991. ‘fore that? They love you?”

Rachel swallows. “Yes,” she says.

Sarah gives her a look, sideways. “Shit, sorry,” she says. “Y’know I’m gettin’ into it, though, yeah? Can’t write about you if I haven’t got the – yeah, you get it. Sorry.

“Foster system, myself,” she offers. “Never had siblings or nothing, mostly just read. Movin’ from place to place, family to family. Bookshelf to bookshelf.” She looks rattled. Too much quid pro quo, apparently; she clears her throat. “So, uh.”

“And now?” Rachel says, before Sarah can ask her next question.

“Got four roommates,” Sarah says, her voice emotionless. “Me ‘n Cosima ‘n Alison ‘n Helena. Krystal sometimes. Big happy family.”

“I can tell Ms. Goderitch doesn’t visit often,” Rachel says, “since you don’t seem to have taken advantage of any of her personal grooming tips.”

Sarah snorts, but relaxes. “Piss off.”

“It’s an excellent column.”

“Piss  _off_.”

“I enjoy the use of text acronyms in the actual prose.”

“Couldn’t let anyone put the pieces together, could I?” But Sarah’s smiling. She paces across the office, sits down across the desk. “Can’t believe you figured it all out. Smart bitch. Guess that’s how you made it this far, yeah?”

“Exactly.”

“Mm.” Sarah tilts her head to the side. “Gonna need to do a few more interviews like this–”

“This was an interview?” Rachel says.

“Oh yeah,” Sarah says. “I’m gettin’ your number, Duncan.” She smirks. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

* * *

She does a few more interviews – Rachel’s office, Rachel’s apartment, an empty lot by a slow-moving river, a bar where Sarah has to lean in close to shout in Rachel’s ear over the music. She really is an interesting person. She watches everything around her, and takes it in; she could probably take over Rachel’s job, if she had enough time to watch Rachel work at it. Instead she stays in her apartment (“That’s second book money, right there.  _Island of Westmorland_ paid for the whole thing. Never movin’ out.” “Second? Where did your first paycheck go?” “Better jacket.”), eats too much takeout (“Can’t cook.”), and writes. Relentlessly. Anything, everything. Rachel dug a little further and found that Sarah is contributing to three different magazines, publishing several books a year, and writing a play in her spare time. (“It’s Alison’s, it’s gonna be shit and it’s gonna sell out.”) She doesn’t stay still. She doesn’t  _stop_.

Three months after their first meeting, Sarah comes into Rachel’s office and takes a chair.

“I have a meeting,” Rachel says.

“Sent you an email,” Sarah says.

She did. Rachel opens it. It’s a draft – a neat two hundred pages. She looks at Sarah; she thinks her expression is baffled and sharp enough to summarize everything.

Sarah shrugs. (Her hands are  _still_  in her pockets.) “Pushed back the fourth  _Revival_  book,” she says. “Turned in a shite first draft of  _Fishblade_  but all of Helena’s drafts are weird shit anyways, that’s why she’s fun.” She hunches up and drums her feet on the floor. “Thought you’d want to see it.”

Rachel does. She does want to see it. She can see scattered phrases from the first few paragraphs and she wants this more than anything.

“I really do have a meeting,” she says regretfully.

“’t’s fine,” Sarah says. She slouches further in the chair as Rachel stands. “I’m gonna–”

Rachel puts a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Stay.”

It’s the first time they’ve ever touched. Sarah gives Rachel a look of wide-eyed animal panic and Rachel thinks: when is the last time either of them touched  _anyone_. Rachel shakes hands, sometimes. Does Sarah? She lives alone, she sends out drafts under false names. She drinks in a terrible bar. Does Sarah touch anyone?

She keeps her hand on Sarah’s shoulder, squeezes once. She leaves the office.

* * *

Reading the draft is difficult. It’s more difficult with Sarah watching her, squirming in her seat like a guilty student in the principal’s office. Occasionally she bursts into things like “I know the third chapter’s shite, transitions are a bitch” and “Guessed that from Wikipedia” and “God, I know it’s all shit, you can just say it” but she doesn’t move and she doesn’t seem to want Rachel to respond. 

“Sarah,” Rachel says, as she reads through her promotion to Vice President at the DYAD corporation – the wry, wistful tone, a woman speaking of her younger self with intermingled pity and fondness. She has never seen anything like this particular feeling in any of Sarah’s works. (She’s read them.) (All of them.) (Yes, including the bondage one.)

“Yeah,” Sarah says, sudden and urgent.

“Have you ever watched anyone read your writing before.”

Sarah makes a gulped scuff of a cough. She doesn’t say anything for too long. “What,” she says after a second, shaky with bravado, “you gonna write my biography next?”

“I am not nearly as talented as you. I couldn’t hope to even try.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Cheers.”

Rachel climbs the corporate ladder in neat black text. Outside, the sky gets dark. Eventually Rachel closes her laptop with a sigh.

“You done?” Sarah says. She hasn’t moved. Oh, she’s moved – she’s twitched, hopped, shifted, gotten up to use the bathroom a few times – but she hasn’t left. Hasn’t paced. Just watched Rachel, intent and terrified.

“No,” Rachel says.

“Oh. You don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Rachel says. She tilts her head to the side, considers. “Come home with me.”

“What?”

“So I can finish reading it. Alternatively, I could email you my comm–”

“It’s fine,” Sarah says, zipping up her ratty jacket. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Sarah knows where the drink cabinet is. She makes Rachel a martini out of habit, frowning absentmindedly while she does. Pours herself a finger of whiskey. Rachel reaches out her hand and takes the glass without realizing she’s done it. Oh. She drinks it: perfect.

The writing: perfect. An immaculate understanding. It just makes Rachel want Sarah more; she wants to lock her in this apartment and watch her write forever, becoming a thousand different people, understanding the heart of each of them.

She finishes. The last page is hopeful; the hope comes filtering through the cracks of amusement and sharpness and a little bit of sarcasm. It’s witty, it’s clever, it’s tired, it’s emotional. Rachel will be famous. Rachel will be – for the first time in her entire life – something close to beloved.

“Beautiful,” she says, and Sarah startles awake. Rachel didn’t realize she was asleep on the couch, but she was. Now she’s awake. “What?” she says, eloquently.

“It’s beautiful,” Rachel says. “Three months and the Internet. You are truly unbelievable, Sarah Manning.”

Sarah clears her throat. “Great,” she says. “So. Uh.”

“I have a few comments,” Rachel says.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah. ‘course. I guess I can – keep working on that, and – uh. Come…back?”

She crouches on the edge of the couch like a feral animal. Rachel wants to tame her. Rachel wants – oh, a lot of things. She wants Sarah to help her write speeches. She wants to come back to her apartment at the end of the day and find Sarah in a haze of writing, lies spooling from her fingertips with effortless ease. She wants the romance and the science fiction and the horror and the love that Sarah has put into every word of this draft.

For now, she settles for leaning across the couch and pressing her mouth to Sarah’s. Sarah tastes like sleep; she smells like winter. When Rachel’s mouth touches hers she makes a low whine and kisses Rachel back like she’s starving for it, hand reaching up to cup Rachel’s face. 

Rachel breaks the kiss. “Or,” she says, “you could stay.”

Sarah’s face breaks into a grin, wide and hopeful and thrilled. “Alright,” she says, and she does.


	5. Soccer game moms

Sarah hates it when Kira’s school goes up against the Cygnets. She doesn’t hate the little girls on the Cygnet team – they’re adorable, and dressed in yellow like a bunch of cute little bumblebees – but she hates the moms. Private school moms. Sometimes the nannies are there, and that’s fine; she can talk to the nannies. But sometimes the moms show up for their Instagrams or Pinterests or whatever the hell rich stay-at-home mothers do with their time and they’re just the worst. They make Sarah feel like shit.

She’s pretty sure the woman next to her in the bleachers is a Cygnet mom. Her skirt suit looks like it costs more than Sarah makes in a month, for one thing. For another thing she keeps looking up from her iPhone and frowning in the direction of the little girl on the Cygnet team with a leg brace before looking back down.

“She yours?” Sarah says, warily.

Sarah is met with a flat stare and then the woman next to her returns to her phone.

“You’re gonna come all the way out here and not even watch your kid,” Sarah says, and then she has to stop for a second and roar as Kira scores a pint-size victory. The woman next to Sarah winces, a polite small expression.

“I don’t know where your idea of false camaraderie comes from,” she says, “but I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me out of it.” She sends an email with a deliberate stab of her thumb.

Bitch.

“Y’know, they tell the kids to be good sports,” Sarah says. The woman next to her doesn’t even look up, which goads Sarah enough to say: “Or is that just a public school thing, ‘cause we’re not rich enough to pay our way out of our problems.”

Well, the phone’s off now.

“Or maybe it’s only that your children need more instruction,” says the stranger, “considering who their role models are.”

“Say that aga–” Sarah says, but god – Kira – she looks back at the field. Fuck this bitch. Sarah doesn’t need her. God, Sarah’s going to kill her, she isn’t going to kill her, she isn’t going to start a fight at Kira’s championship game. She’s not going to do that. Kira’s going to win and Sarah is going to rub it in this bitch’s face and then she’s going to buy Kira an enormous ice cream. Yeah. Good. That’s good.

The bitch’s phone buzzes. “Rachel Duncan,” she says, and – fuck her – leaves the stands. Sarah can see the little girl with a brace looking up to the bleachers and then looking back down, hunching her shoulders, biting her lip. Sarah gives a big old scream for Kira, across the field. Kira makes a crumpled-up face of embarrassment and then beams despite herself.

A few minutes later Rachel sits back down, recrosses her legs. She meets Sarah’s sideways look and hisses: “You have no  _idea_  what I had to do in order to be here. Some of us have jobs.”

“I’ve got two,” Sarah spits. “You can piss off.”

The whistle shrieks: break time. Sarah goes clattering down the bleachers and crushes Kira in a hug the second she gets close enough. “ _Mom_ ,” Kira groans, “you aren’t even supposed to be  _down_ here,” but she lets herself be hugged.

“Yeah, it’s probably ‘cause you’re all gross,” Sarah says. “You smell terrible, babes.” She rocks Kira back and forth a little bit.

“ _Mom_.”

“Just sayin’! You’re takin’ a bath when you get home, that’s all.”

“After ice cream?”

“I dunno, you planning on winning?”

“Always,” Kira says, very seriously. Sarah beams at her and ruffles her hair, because Kira hates it when she does that. Sure enough, she gets another  _mooooom_.

“Alright, I’m leavin’ you to it,” Sarah says. “Go eat an orange slice or somethin’, monkey.”

“I’m gonna win!” Kira says, and flexes.

“You’re always a winner to me,” Sarah says. Kira rolls her eyes so far back into her head that all Sarah can see is white; Sarah snorts, makes her way back up to her seat. 

When she sits down she sees, across the field, Rachel crouched down with her hands on the shoulders of the girl with the leg brace. She is saying something very serious. Her entire attention is focused on this kid; Sarah feels wrong for even looking at it. Siobhan got a photo of her looking at Kira, right after Kira was born, and it was that face. Fuck. Sarah looks away; Sarah looks back. They’re hugging. Sarah looks away for real this time. She feels like shit.

The whistle blows and the game starts up again. Sarah watches Kira kick Cygnet ass and listens to the click of heels as Rachel makes her way back to her seat. Sarah’s leg bounces. She twitches a little bit.

“Hey,” she blurts.

“Now what.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, “for earlier. I know it’s hard making time for this shit. Didn’t mean to jump on your throat about it. I know – yeah. It’s hard. I’m sorry.”

“I hope you don’t use that language around your daughter,” Rachel says, and then closes her eyes and exhales through her nose. “That was uncalled for. Apology accepted. Thank you.” She holds out a hand. “Rachel Duncan.”

Sarah grabs it. “Sarah,” she says. “Uh, Manning. Hey.”

Rachel has a very firm handshake. This isn’t surprising.

“She’s good,” Sarah says, turning back to the field.

“She shouldn’t be playing,” Rachel says, voice straining at the edges with tampered-down anxiety. “Her physical therapist thought it might be beneficial, but I worry–” she stops. “I’m sorry. Thank you, on Charlotte’s behalf. She’s very excited to have made it to the championships.”

“Mine too,” Sarah says. “Kira won’t take off her bloody uniform, ever.”

“I had to threaten Charlotte to make her take hers off,” Rachel says, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. “Something about how it’s good luck to smell like a barnyard.”

Sarah laughs, once, sudden and loud. “Same!” she says. “Exact same bloody story. Spread by someone’s mum who didn’t have to deal with any of this shit and wanted the rest of us to suffer.”

When she looks over, Rachel is actually smiling at her. Oh, shit, she’s cute. Fuck. Sarah looks away again.

“Yeah  _Kira!_ ” she yells again, and a few more whoops just to really embarrass the shit out of her daughter.

“So, uh,” she says, because she’s a terrible bi embarrassment, “your husband couldn’t make it?”

“No husband,” Rachel says. “I wanted a daughter. I have a tendency to relentlessly pursue the things I want, even after an – unfortunate number of failed attempts.” She clicks on her phone and refreshes her email inbox. Oh. Sarah looks away again.

“Uh, me either,” she says. “Single mum. That’s why the, y’know. Two jobs. So.”

“She’s very lucky to have you,” Rachel says quietly.

Sarah laughs and then fumbles for a way to change the subject. “So’s yours,” she says. “Can tell you’d kill for her.”

“That was only the one time,” Rachel says. Sarah turns to blink at her and Rachel is smiling again. “That was a joke,” she adds.

“Funny,” Sarah says. Swallows. “You’re funny.” She turns away. Oh fuck her entire life.

“Not especially,” Rachel says. “Meetings with governance boards rarely call for – oh, you’re joking.  _Yes,_ this is Rachel.” She stands up again, phone glued to her ear, and makes her way out of the bleachers again. When Charlotte looks up to the bleachers this time Sarah gives her a thumbs-up. Charlotte makes a puzzled, screwed-up little face, and then tentatively gives her a thumbs-up back. Across the field Kira is frowning at Sarah with another puzzled expression. Sarah switches the thumbs-up over to her. Kira’s face blanches, and she mouths ARE YOU FLIRTING WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM very clearly up into the bleachers. Sarah flushes.

“Go play sports,” she yells down at her daughter.

“ _Mom!_ ” Kira wails, and then gets distracted by a teammate and goes back into the game. Rachel sits down next to Sarah a moment later. Is it Sarah’s imagination? Is she slightly closer? Sarah can smell her now, which she couldn’t a minute ago. Rachel smells like expensive perfume. Sarah probably still smells like her daughter’s sweaty jersey. 

“I’m sorry,” Rachel says, voice low with irritation. “No one at this company can run things without me for two  _hours_ , apparently.”

“Don’t worry,” Sarah says. “I embarrassed your daughter too, I got you covered.” She turns her head to grin at Rachel – who is definitely closer. Sarah can see the faint shadow of freckles under Rachel’s foundation. Oh god, was she flirting? Was Rachel also flirting? Are they flirting at their kids’ sports tournament? Fuck.

“Come give lectures at my company on efficiency and teamwork,” Rachel mutters lowly. 

“That another joke?”

“I wish it had been a joke. I’ll pay you to scream at my head of Research and Development. I don’t need to see your resume, I’ve heard enough out of you during this game.”

“You could try it sometime,” Sarah says. “‘s, what’s the word. Cathartic.”

When she turns to look, Rachel is staring at her with her eyebrows slightly raised. Sarah thought her eyes were brown, but they’re actually sort of green in the light and god that’s a lot of freckles she looks away again. Isn’t foundation supposed to cover all of that up? Rachel’s thigh is pretty much against her thigh. Sarah wants to bounce her leg but she can’t, because Rachel’s leg is right there and Sarah’s leg would just sort of be stroking against Rachel’s and “ _Kira!_ ” she yells as her daughter almost manages to score a point. Kira turns to give her a look, sees Rachel, and goes through an entire face journey before she looks back down.

“If you heard a rip,” Rachel says, “that was my eardrum.”

 _You could move_ , Sarah thinks of saying. She doesn’t say it. “It’s punishment for not yellin’ loud enough,” she says. “Sorry. You deserved it.”

Rachel exhales through her nose. Charlotte – surprisingly killer, considering that brace – scores again and Rachel  _belts_ her name. When Charlotte startles and looks up to the stands, Rachel just smiles. After a second, Charlotte beams back. She laughs a bit and goes back to the game.

“Ow,” Sarah says. Rachel actually  _snorts_  and leans back onto the bleacher, hands behind her, one of them dangerously close to Sarah’s hip.

“Punishment,” she says.

“Nice work,” Sarah says, bumping Rachel’s shoulder with hers. “Gonna make you a real soccer mum yet. Next stop is gettin’ wasted after the game and rippin’ each other’s hair out ‘cause your kid played better.”

“Is it really?” Rachel says, sounding curious.

“Do I look like I’ve lost hair to you?”

“I’m sure you’d be a formidable opponent,” Rachel says, “and no, I meant drinks. Is that part of the post-game experience? This is my first, you know.”

Oh fuck.

“Could be,” Sarah says. “Gotta be honest, the other mums here are pretty shit. So you’d just be stuck with me. Sorry.”

“Well,” Rachel says. “That would be preferable.” She looks at Sarah, face twisting into something expectant. Sarah can’t help herself: her eyes flick down to Rachel’s mouth, back up. Rachel smirks and looks away again.

“If you’re not opposed,” Rachel says.

“I’m not opposed.”

“Good,” Rachel says quietly. She turns back to watch the game. She doesn’t cheer for Charlotte again, but whenever Charlotte turns to look their way she sees whatever is on Rachel’s face and smiles.

Kira, on the other hand, won’t even look up to the stands anymore, so she doesn’t even  _deserve_ Sarah cheering for her. Sarah cheers anyways. When Kira’s team beats the Cygnets Sarah climbs up onto the bleachers and  _roars_  with the volume of a previous football hooligan. Kira laughs so hard she almost falls over. “Mom  _stop_ ,” she yells, but she doesn’t sound like she means it. 

“Good game,” Rachel says. Sarah looks down at her and then jumps off the metal bleacher, hits the deck with a resounding  _clang_.

“Same,” she says. “Hope you know you’re payin’ for drinks. That’s a post-game rule, sorry I forgot to tell you.”

“I’m sure it is,” Rachel says, smile tugging up her lips. “Here. Give me your phone.” They switch phones – Rachel’s keeps flashing with emails as Sarah types her contact information in, RE: RE: RE: BRIGHTBORN CONTRACTS and RESCHEDULED: 7:30 MEETING and other shit. Sarah hands the phone back. “You missed a flood,” she says.

“I always do,” Rachel says, sounding exhausted. “I’m going to go buy Charlotte consolation paints and hope it makes her give up on sports.” She stands. “It’s been a pleasure, Sarah.”

“See you tonight?” Sarah says.

The smile grows on Rachel’s mouth, stretches it all the way out. “Tonight,” she says. She leans forward and kisses Sarah’s cheek, then makes her elegant swaying way out of the bleachers and towards her daughter. Charlotte speeds towards her, grabs Rachel’s extended hand, and swings it back and forth as they leave. Sarah’s heart throbs with something warm and full; she swallows, makes her way down the bleachers.

“Oh my god,” Kira groans, looking two seconds from collapsing. “Mom you’ve got stuff on your  _face_.” 

Lipstick. Shit.

“So do you!” Sarah says. “It’s sweat, urgh. Guess you’re gonna have to go straight to a bath, huh, monkey?”

“I  _won!_ ”

“Yeah, I saw, but…”

“You didn’t even see, you were  _flirting_.”

“Hey Kira. Guess what.”

“…what.”

“We’re goin’ on a date.”

Kira screams her anguish and runs ahead of Sarah towards the car, like she doesn’t know and doesn’t care that it’s locked. Sarah watches her go. She reaches up and touches her fingertips to her cheek, and they come away a little red. Huh. How about that.


	6. Ice cream store employees

“Sarah she’s coming  _now_ ,” Beth hisses.

“Shit,” Sarah hisses back, sliding in through the back door and hiding the jumbo container of pretentious hipster ice cream under the counter. “Shit, shit, shit,” she’s pulling on her apron, “shit, shit,” she has her stupid hat on, “ _shit shit shit_ ” she’s got her scoop and she’s manning the ice cream tubs just in time for Rachel Duncan to storm in and say “ _I know you took it_.”

“Took what,” Sarah says. She isn’t even out of breath. Under the counter Beth flashes her a thumbs-up.

“An entire tub of vanilla ice cream is missing from our back room,” Rachel says, each syllable crisp and precise. God, she’s the worst. God she’s hot. It’s so unfair that Swan doesn’t make their employees wear aprons or stupid little hats. Instead Rachel looks like she’s about to go to lunch somewhere Sarah can’t afford. Also she looks hot. 

“Maybe someone stole it,” Beth says, without missing a beat.

“ _Sarah_ ,” Rachel says. Snarls, maybe. 

“Rachel,” Sarah says. “We’ve been here all day, servin’ up customers. With our ice cream. That’s, y’know, good. Made from real milk and all that.”

Rachel closes her eyes; she looks like a character from a Greek tragedy. “I  _know_ ,” she says, “that it was you.”

“Great,” Beth says, “except for the fact that it wasn’t us.”

“Not you,” Rachel says. Her eyes snap open. She looks at Sarah. Sarah’s really proud of that look; it took her months to escalate from  _you are a mosquito buzzing around my head_ to  _I would personally like to cut off each of your fingers._ Took effort.

“Dunno what to tell you,” Sarah says, and a customer walks in.

“Hi,” he says. “Can I get vanilla? In a bowl? Two scoops?” He does a double-take at Rachel’s uniform. “Are you from Swan? You guys are out of vanilla.”

“I’m aware,” Rachel says through gritted teeth. 

“Coming right up!” Beth says, and jabs Sarah in the side with her elbow. Sarah starts scooping vanilla. Rachel’s eyes are going to melt the glass, Sarah, and all of the ice cream. Sarah looks up as she’s packing the last of the ice cream in; she winks at Rachel, and Rachel looks like her head is going to explode in one messy burst.

The customer pays. He exits. The three of them stare at each other, old-fashioned standoff.

“What do you  _want_ ,” Rachel snarls.

“Good ice cream,” Sarah says, leaning against the freezer case. “Good thing I work at Bell’s, yeah? Otherwise who knows what sort of hipster shite I’d have to deal with.”

Rachel practically shivers, standing still, glaring a hole through Sarah. Then abruptly she pivots and storms out, the little bell on the door dinging cheerfully behind her.

“Have a good day!” Sarah calls after her, and waits ‘til she’s gone to mutter “Bitch.”

* * *

So of course Sarah finds her in the freezer at the end of her shift. Rachel is still wearing Swan’s immaculate white-and-grey uniform; she blends into the freezer, so it takes Sarah a minute to realize that Rachel is–

“Hey,” she says. “Don’t screw with our bloody ice cream!”

Rachel blinks at her. She turns and looks at the tub that’s clearly marked with Swan’s logo. She turns back. “You’re a  _child_ ,” she says. “You’re a child. You don’t even care about any of the people working at Swan – our jobs, anything. You want to laugh with your friends. I  _despise_ you.”

Sick guilt fills up Sarah’s throat and – god, yeah, she’s dumb. She’s the worst. Sarah’s been trying to pull Rachel’s pigtails and she’s been what, stealing? She’s a piece of shit.

The anger on Rachel’s face curdles and melts. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry,” she says, hesitant.

Sarah shrugs a shoulder.

“Oh, for–” Rachel starts, and then sighs out in a burst through her nose. “Help me carry this back.”

It’s definitely manageable for one person to lift the tub – that’s how Sarah got it here – but she lifts it anyways and watches Rachel sweep off towards Swan’s across the way as Sarah closes and locks up Bell’s. It really is unfair that Rachel is hot. That shouldn’t be allowed. Sarah still has her stupid little hat on and Rachel, walking across the mall, looks like someone should be photographing her.

Sarah finishes locking up, grabs the ice cream, jogs after her.

This late at night the mall is dead, just a few stragglers looking for something to eat. Bell’s looks better at night – gold and yellow, homey – but people keep showing up at the white and silver freezercase that is Swan’s. Fucking hipsters. Rachel leads Sarah around to a back entrance, and the only sound is their feet on the ground and the distant trickling of a fountain.

“I thought we were having fun,” Sarah says.

Rachel stops. Turns. Stares at her.

“ _I_ was having fun,” Sarah says.

“My manager has almost fired me,” Rachel says, “three times.”

Sarah winces. “Sorry,” she says. “Come on, though, your ice cream is shite.”

“I like it,” Rachel says very quietly. She types in the code on a keypad and they enter through the backdoor to another spaceship Swan interior. It is so phenomenally ugly in here.

“No you don’t,” Sarah says. “No one likes it.”

“It’s the only ice cream I’ll eat,” Rachel says. She flicks on a light switch and the freezer room lights up. “You know where this goes, I assume.”

Sarah does. She only took it this morning. She slots it back into place.

“You really thought we were having fun,” Rachel says, as she closes the freezer room and locks it.

Sarah shrugs. “I dunno,” she says. “Thought you were just a dramatic bitch. Kept stormin’ over. Got you out from behind that counter, yeah?”

Rachel starts washing the scoops and cleaning them. “We aren’t friends,” she says, only it sounds like a question.

Sarah shrugs again, even though Rachel can’t see her. “You should’ve seen the shit Beth did to me when I started.”

“But we aren’t friends.”

“We’re,” Sarah says, and her voice strangles her throat. She coughs. “We’re, just. Y’know. Yeah.”

Rachel turns to look at Sarah over her shoulder. She looks amused, despite everything. “Are you dying.”

“Uh,” Sarah wheezes.

“If I say we’re friends,” Rachel says, “will you stop trying your best to wreck my place of employment.”

Oh, god, oh god, oh fuck, Sarah’s actually going to say it. She doesn’t want to say it and she can’t say it and she really is opening her idiot mouth and saying, in one vomit rush, “I like you do you want to go out.”

She closes her mouth. Opens her mouth. “Oh shit,” she says.

Rachel turns around, very slowly. There’s a flush high on her cheeks. “That’s not funny,” she says. “Was this all to play a prank on me? Was that the point of all of this? You aren’t  _funny_ , Sarah.”

“It wasn’t a joke,” Sarah says; her face is redder than Rachel’s, she can feel it. “I’m just – I dunno – your uniform’s better than ours? That’s shite? I just – shit. I’m muckin’ this up. Pretend I didn’t say anything. Sorry about the ice cream, won’t do that again,” and she books it for the exit in the back. She is moving to Iceland. She is never ever coming back to this mall job.

“Sarah,” Rachel says.

“ _Sarah_ ,” Rachel says.

Sarah stops, hand on the handle. “It wasn’t a joke,” she says, eyes screwed shut. “I just – wanted to see you and I didn’t want to come over here and eat this toxic bloody sludge.”

“It’s  _good ice cream_ ,” Rachel says, and when Sarah turns around Rachel is standing right there. Right there. Her hands are clenched into fists; her chin is up. She’s still blushing in her cheeks and in bright awkward splotches along her neck. It isn’t pretty, but it is. It’s pretty. Somehow.

Sarah swallows. “It’s just ice,” she says. “What the hell–” and then Rachel has walked a few determined steps forward and kissed her.

Rachel’s mouth smashed against hers. When Sarah’s eyes snap open she sees that Rachel’s are shut tight, determined and furious. Her brow is furrowed. She looks like she’s about to fire a gun for the first time.

Sarah steps back. “Hey,” she says. “You alright?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel says, stepping back, licking her lips. “I don’t know. You’re an idiot.”

“True.”

“You’re very – attractive.”

“Thanks.”

“You have terrible taste in ice cream.”

“Piss off, I’m right.”

“You should take me on a date,” Rachel says in a high thin voice, chin still up. “If this isn’t a joke. If it is a joke I’ll bury you. Swan has cameras. It’s easy to see that you took our product.”

“Christ, slow down,” Sarah says helplessly. “It’s not – it’s really not a joke, Rachel, I wouldn’t be that much of a bitch, I.” She runs a hand through her hair only her hand bumps into the  _stupid fucking hat_  and she has to stop partway through. “D’you really. Uh. Want to.”

“I don’t know,” Rachel says, still in that weird voice. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Yes.”

“Great,” Sarah says. “Uh. You free – Friday?”

“Yes,” Rachel says.

“Great,” Sarah says.

Rachel swallows. Her chin, somehow, tilts up higher. “Kiss me again,” she says.

Sarah steps forward. Rachel just looks at her, eyes enormous. “You sure?” Sarah says.

“I don’t have all day, Sarah,” Rachel says, and she finally sounds like herself again.

“Alright, bloody hell,” Sarah mutters, and takes Rachel’s face in her hands and kisses her. She makes it warm and slow and easy and Rachel’s hands close around her wrists and Rachel kisses her back. Sarah hasn’t really thought about kissing Rachel (much) (okay, maybe she has a little) (okay, maybe a lot) but she hadn’t even imagined it could have gone like this. Rachel’s hot and she wants to kiss Sarah. Holy shit.

Rachel breaks the kiss and rests her forehead against Sarah’s. “Friday,” she says, voice rough.

“Yeah.”

“If you come into Swan again,” Rachel says, “for any purpose except buying and consuming ice cream, I will have you fired. Do you understand this.”

“You’re killing the romance already,” Sarah says. “Yeah. I get it. Great.”

“Excellent,” Rachel says, and kisses her again.


	7. Deer hunting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No Deer Were Harmed In The Making Of This Fic, Seriously, No Deer Are Harmed

It is bitterly cold where they are crouched in the woods, and Ira’s fiance’s foster sister seems bored out of her mind. To be fair: Rachel is also bored out of her mind. And freezing to death. She hadn’t wanted to wear anything well-made into the woods, and so she’s left wearing hand-me-downs from Ira’s fiance’s entire family. Rachel’s lone victory was managing to decline the Pussy Riot sweatshirt, which has clothed Ira’s fiance’s–

Oh, honestly. Her name is Sarah. Rachel should call her Sarah.

“When are we allowed to leave the woods,” Rachel says.

“You can go now,” Sarah says, “if you want to help set up the wedding.” She cracks a can of beer open and takes a long pull, which is answer enough to her own implied question.

“Let me rephrase,” Rachel says. “When will be allowed to leave the woods without being roped into flower selection or emotional hysterics.”

“Think the hysterics are on your side of the family. Fe just keeps frowning at my hair.”

“I have never hunted in my life,” Rachel says. “I don’t intend to start now.”

“I haven’t been out of the bloody city since I was twenty-two,” Sarah says. “My twin’s a nut for this shite, guess S mixed us up. Or you ‘n me are meant to bond over not knowin’ how these rifles work.”

Oh, thank god. Rachel thought she was the only one who didn’t know how the rifles worked.

“Where is your twin,” she says, out of politeness. She breathes into her cupped hands and they continue to not feel like anything except icicles.

“With the party planner. Figurin’ out what to do with a shit ton of game meat. She’s bloody lucky Fe wanted to get married in the woods, for whatever reason.”

“Ira thought it would be rustic,” Rachel says, exhausted with the concept. “He can be…persuasive. One tends to give in to him, just to avoid the fuss he makes when he doesn’t get his way.”

Sarah snorts. “Cheers to that, Fe,” she says, drinking more beer. She drains the can, crumples it in one decisive gesture, throws it into the backpack full of hunting paraphernalia she has dragged into the woods. She leans against it and stretches her legs out. “What?” she says, when Rachel looks. “You don’t really think we’re gonna shoot a bloody deer and drag it home, do you? Who cares what we do.  _I’m_ gonna try and avoid a bloody cramp, ta.”

Rachel hasn’t sat on the ground since she was maybe six years old. She doesn’t intend to start now. She keeps crouching stubbornly, to maintain some small shred of dignity.

“Y’know I don’t think we’ve even met?” Sarah says. “Saw you at that godawful dinner party but you were down the table. Who the hell are you, Rachel Blair.”

“Duncan. Rachel Duncan.”

“Our families and their clusterfuck of last names,” Sarah mutters. “We’ve got four for the four of us, yeah? Bloody insane. So. Rachel Duncan. Share with the class.”

“I’m Vice President of a growing technology company in Toronto,” Rachel says. “I graduated from the Rotman School with a focus in international business. I–”

Sarah’s hand grabs her arm. “Shh,” she says. “Shut your bloody gob.”

Rachel shuts her bloody gob. Through the gaps in the trees, a doe makes her careful way through the snow and bits of grass. She lowers her head to delicately nibble and then moves on, a serene ghost in the winter white.

“Holy shit,” Sarah breathes. “You know I’ve never actually seen one.”

Rachel considers her memory. “I haven’t either,” she says. “I feel even less inclined to kill it, if that were possible.”

“Dunno if I can eat Helena’s venison jerky now,” Sarah says, sounding stunned by it. Her hand is still on Rachel’s arm. Rachel can’t help the small noise she makes when Sarah takes her hand away; it is so  _damn_  cold out here.

“What,” Sarah says.

“That’s the warmest I’ve been in twenty minutes,” Rachel says, and then clears her throat. “Tell me about your life. Quid pro quo.”

Silence. When Rachel turns to look, Sarah is staring at her. “You can, uh,” she says. “Come over here? If you want?” Her voice is slightly strained. God, Rachel can’t take her seriously with that sweatshirt on. 

She lifts her chin and opens her mouth and then a cold wind sneaks under the hem of her jacket and alright,  _fine_. Fine. Fine. She makes her way to Sarah and sits on the ground. It’s cold, and hard, and possibly also muddy. 

Sarah’s arm over her shoulders is very warm. Sarah smells like men’s deodorant and cheap beer and cold metal. There are worse things, Rachel tells herself, pretending it’s a consolation, pretending she hasn’t started unconsciously pressing herself a little bit closer to the warm weight of Sarah in the cold. There are worse things. This is survivable.

“Uh,” Sarah says. “I’m Sarah. Manning. That’s the name they gave me – yeah. Shit, this is harder than I thought. Mostly I just watch a lot of movies, that’s my thing. I tend bars at nights. Fe says I’m a vampire.”

“What films.”

“Old shit. Foreign shit. I dunno.”

“ _Casablanca_?”

“Shit, no, haven’t seen it.”

“You should,” Rachel says. “It’s a classic. The impossibility of love. Doing the right things for entirely the wrong reasons.

“When I was a child,” she says. “I thought I was in love with Humphrey Bogart. It turns out I only wanted to be him.”

Sarah snorts. The motion moves through Rachel. “You wanted to own a bar? You can buy ours. Give me a raise, though, yeah?”

“Oh no,” Rachel says. “I wanted to kiss Ingrid Bergman.  _Desperately_. I realized this years later and the movie was briefly ruined for me.”

“Oh,” Sarah says, and before Rachel can start that dropped-stomach panic Sarah says: “Christ, not one straight person in our family, is there. When I told S I was bi she used it to talk about this girlfriend she had when she was twenty-four, thought I’d lose my mind.”

“My mother,” Rachel says, “is unfortunately heterosexual. Now you know.”

“Sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t say that, for a brief moment I thought she had finally died.”

Sarah laughs; it shakes Rachel too. “Well you’ve got a new mum now,” she says. “Or you will tomorrow. Cheers. Hope you like tea.”

“It’s warm,” Rachel says. She burrows closer to Sarah. “I’m appreciating it more at this moment than I ever have.”

Sarah rubs Rachel’s shoulder briskly. “Fragile,” she says, sounding amused.

“All of your nerve endings must be dead.”

“Maybe it’s the beer. You want some?”

“Absolutely not.”

“It’ll warm you up.”

Rachel gives a choked sigh. “Fine.”

Sarah leaves her to flip open the backpack and pull out a slightly dinged can of beer. She pops the top and hands it to Rachel, licks foam in one long stripe from her thumb. Rachel takes the beer and doesn’t stare at Sarah’s thumb any more or less than would be usual. She drinks. It tastes like foul water. If she focuses on that, she doesn’t have to think about the way they’ve resumed – there  _has_  to be a better word than “cuddling.”

“This is disgusting,” Rachel says. “Aren’t you a bartender? Shouldn’t you have  _taste?_ ”

“Piss off!” Sarah says. “I’ve got  _taste_. That shit’s cheap and it works. What  more d’you need.”

Out of some suicidal tendency or mere stubbornness, Rachel chugs the entire can. She drops it at their feet and dry heaves, once. “Oh,” she says. “ _Oh_. No.”

Sarah laughs so hard she almost keels over and takes Rachel with her. Instead her head just knocks against Rachel’s head, hair brushing against Rachel’s mouth before she leans away. “God,” she gasps, “oh my–” and then she loses it again.

“You’re trying to poison me,” Rachel says.

Sarah laughs harder.

“You’re–” and then Rachel claps her hand over Sarah’s mouth and Sarah freezes. The doe is back, not paying attention to them even though Sarah’s laughter is still echoing through the trees. She comes close enough for Rachel to see the hairs on her pelt, the small flicks of her ears. Rachel could pick up a rifle, now, and shoot her. She’d bleed out. They would drag the meat home. Instead she scuffs a foot against the ground and the deer startles and runs.

“Never tell anyone,” Rachel says, lifting her hand away from Sarah’s mouth.

“That you’ve got a soft spot for Bambi?”

“I’m drunk,” Rachel says, “off of your absolutely abysmal beer. This never happened.” She leans back against Sarah. God, Sarah is warm. Everything is warm. The beer socks Rachel all at once, and her entire body is warm.

“Save a dance for me at their wedding,” she says.

“Sure,” Sarah says, mouth pressed to Rachel’s hair. “You gonna be drunk then too?”

“Ira’s speech has seven index cards. What do you think.”

“You gonna be drunk enough to do something stupid with me?” Sarah says.

“I’m drunk enough for that now,” Rachel says, and Sarah lets out a breath of a laugh. 

“You sure?” she says, so Rachel tilts her head a bit and kisses her. Once: a soft closed-mouth kiss. She leans back.

“I think we could make even stupider decisions,” she says. “But not in the mud, and not while you’re wearing that sweatshirt.  _Don’t –_ make a joke about it or I will leave you here in the snow.”

“How’d you know,” Sarah says, smiling. She strokes her fingers over Rachel’s shoulder and then stands up, offers Rachel a hand. Rachel takes it. With Sarah’s other hand, she grabs the bag. They start walking. Sarah doesn’t drop Rachel’s hand, and Rachel supposes she forgives her.

“Do you want to make up a story about our hunting prowess,” Rachel says, “or shall I.”

“I think this is exactly what S wanted,” Sarah says, “the bitch.” She sounds fond. Rachel holds her hand all the way to the car, and then lets go.


	8. Superhero/Supervillain

Rachel opens the door to her apartment, puts down her keys, turns on the light, and sees Sarah lounging on her balcony outside. Through the glass wall, she’s only visible as a silhouette – but a silhouette Rachel would know anywhere. She sighs, pours herself a glass of wine, and walks onto the balcony.

“I must say,” she says, “this  _is_ subtler than your usual approach of showing up and punching me in the face.”

“Thought about it,” Sarah says.

“What influenced your decision?”

Sarah tilts her head and looks at Rachel. Rachel runs a catalogue: no split lip, no bruise, no obvious lean to comfort a broken rib. She’s been staying out of trouble.

Or maybe it’s just that she can’t find good trouble, now that Rachel’s out of the business.

“Shit’s brewing,” Sarah says. She leans back against the railing, looks out over her city. Wind tangles in her hair. “Too much for me.”

Rachel takes a slow, thoughtful sip of wine. “Are you asking me for my help,” she says, each word slow and sweet on her tongue.

“Depends on if you’re willing to give it,” Sarah says.

“I might be.”

“Great. Helpful. Cheers.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Tell me if you’ll help, first.”

Rachel walks across the balcony, listens to the cars below, swirls the dark wine in its glass. “I never had your…gifts,” she says, forcing the words out. “I had the cane.”

“Bet you’ve still got the cane.”

“Why me?”

She turns around on the balcony. She clocks Sarah’s agitation in the way that the shadows around her start to ripple, unsettled. She wonders how many times Sarah ever lets this out. How many people know what Sarah can do? How many people is she hiding from?

Not Rachel. Rachel has always known. That’s why she threw herself at Sarah, over and over again, clawing at Sarah’s veins to try and get that specialness that Sarah has – not – earned–

But she’s different now. She drinks more wine.

“You’re a bitch,” Sarah says. “You haven’t got a heart. People died, ‘cause you were trying to get to me. Too many people.” She drums her fingers on the railing. “I could use that,” she admits.

“Interesting,” Rachel says. “Use a monster to catch a monster. A little darker than your usual tactics, hm?”

“I didn’t call you a monster.”

“Don’t pretend you weren’t implying it. Don’t pretend you never thought it.” Rachel walks over to the fire pit, picks up the lighter, starts a fire. She settles in a chair. “I’ll help you,” she says. “I’m intrigued. Sit down.”

Sarah doesn’t sit down. She paces; the shadows pull towards her, like a whirlpool. “Evie Cho,” she says. “Tryin’ to make her own powered babies. Injects ‘em. Injects their mums. She’s got a lab, downtown, I can’t get into it.”

“But it isn’t the lab you’re after, is it,” Rachel says.

“No,” Sarah says. “It’s not the lab.”

“Did you try the others first?” Rachel says. “All your friends, with their masks and their beautiful dreams. Did you go to them and say you wanted Evie Cho destroyed?”

The fire growls to itself in the dark.

“Did you want to  _believe_  in me,” Rachel says softly.

“No.”

“Did you want me to weep at my chance to do heroics.”

“ _No_.”

“Were you hoping for a repeat of the time we–”

There – finally – the shadows swallow Sarah up like a maw and she is  _right there_ , spat out of the dark, thisclose to Rachel’s face, her shadows swarming up Rachel’s neck and arms and pinning her down. Tying her up. Tipping her chin up to look at Sarah.

“Oh, you  _were_ ,” Rachel says, voice fainter than she’d like it to be. “Understandable. I can’t say I haven’t thought about it, myself.”

Sarah’s hand lands on Rachel’s face, warm and rough. She leans in. This close, Rachel can see the flecks of gold in Sarah’s irises. The dark pit of her pupils. “You’ve still got it,” she breathes. “The eye. I was wondering if you did.”

“I could use it,” Rachel whispers.

Sarah’s thumb presses to Rachel’s lip. “You won’t.”

Rachel swallows. “I won’t.” She wants to touch the tip of her tongue to Sarah’s thumbprint but that was one time, that was once. Sarah needed a way out and Rachel needed, just once, to lay her hands on Sarah’s specialness. She wanted it to burn her.

Sarah got out. Rachel got burned. 

They didn’t do it again.

“Help me,” Sarah whispers, rough. “Please.” She’s so close. She knows exactly what she’s doing to Rachel, but here’s what’s interesting: Rachel is fairly certain it’s doing the same thing to Sarah. Her hand is trembling, finely. Her breathing is guttural.

“Yes,” Rachel breathes.

Sarah drops Rachel’s face; her shadows slither back into the dark, aren’t anything but shadows again. She paces away across the balcony, steps rapid. The dark shivers out Sarah’s anxiousness and fear.

Rachel crosses one leg over the other, waits until Sarah is across the balcony to flatten one hand to her chest. (Her pulse is rapid.) Once Sarah has turned around, Rachel is settled again. “When do we start,” she says.

“I want to see the cane.”

“Alright,” Rachel says. She stands and smoothes down the front of her dress, picks up her wine glass, walks back inside her apartment. Sarah has been in here once, but Rachel repaired all of the broken glass and redecorated so really it isn’t the same apartment at all.

She puts her wine glass down and flips the Twombly print on the wall, looks into the scanner with the eye. It flashes. The room behind the wall opens. Rachel wants to look over her shoulder to see if Sarah is impressed; she doubts Sarah would be impressed, so she doesn’t look over her shoulder. Instead she walks into the room, is hit in the face with the artificial chill and the sterile smell. Her blood heats up, unconsciously. She’d missed this.

“Don’t try anything,” Sarah says, like she can read Rachel’s mind.

“Oh,” Rachel says, “I’ve learned better than that by now.” The cane is in the top drawer of the chest of drawers in the back of the room; in the drawer below it is the suit, white and clean and tight-fitting. Sarah’s shadows crawling over it were always a strange study in chiaroscuro, one that Sarah never properly appreciated. 

Rachel opens the drawer. She pulls out the cane.

“Well?” she says. “Here it is.”

Sarah won’t get closer, which makes something in Rachel darkly satisfied despite herself. “There’s nothing to be frightened of,” she says. “It never  _permanently_ crippled you.”

She slides her hand down the cane with the ease of familiarity, presses an indent. The knives come singing out of the top of the cane with a sharp sound, poised razor-edged and glittering like a terrible sun. “And good news,” Rachel says. “It’s still operational.” She thumbs the indent again and the knives retract. Rachel balances the cane in her hand and then lowers it onto the ground, makes her way back to Sarah. “So.”

“You’re not going to get dressed,” Sarah says, voice rough, hands stuffed in her pockets. Under the harsh light of this room the shadows are small and thin and useless; it’s made that way by design. Sarah is just like any other person in here.

Rachel tilts her head to the side. “Did you want to watch?” 

Before Sarah can say anything, Rachel steps closer – presses her advantage – presses herself right into Sarah’s space. “I could be hiding something,” Rachel says. “You’d never know.”

“You’re gonna help me stop Evie Cho,” Sarah says, like a stubborn and terrified robot. “That’s it.”

“I don’t think it is,” Rachel says, sliding her hand up Sarah’s arm. “I think there will be someone else, after Evie Cho. I think you’ll come back. I think you will keep on coming back, over and over, telling yourself it’s the best way to do the right thing.  _Hoping_  that I might – just once – so you could fight me. So you could do…something else.”

She trails her fingers over Sarah’s collarbone. “You know what we have,” she says. “And you’ll always want it, no matter what you say to anyone else. Or yourself. You’re going to be mine for as long as I want you to be. That’s the deal you made.”

She rests the heel of her hand over the frantic trip of Sarah’s heart. She sucks the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth, considers the picture of Sarah: eyes enormous, breathing rapid, the jump of her throat as she swallows.

Then she steps back, decisive, professional. “I can’t tonight,” she says, crossing the room to put the cane back. “I have a meeting tomorrow morning. I doubt Evie Cho’s factory line will stop any time in the next twenty-four hours.”

“No,” Sarah says. “No, you’re helping me  _now_.”

“Honestly, Sarah,” Rachel says. “It’s embarrassing how desperate you are.”

Shadows scrabble at Rachel’s ankles, but in here they haven’t got the leverage. Rachel nestles the cane back tenderly in its place, and closes the drawer, and turns to watch Sarah.

“Tomorrow night,” she says. “Just the two of us. Aren’t you excited for it?  _I_ am.”

Sarah steps backwards, and again, and she’s out the door, and Rachel still knows the exact nonsound the darkness make when it lets Sarah hide in it. Sarah is gone. Rachel lets the shaking in her legs take over, slides down to the ground. Just for a moment. She sits and she shakes and she thinks about Sarah, which isn’t an unusual thing for her to think about.

Then she stands up. She sucks in a breath. She leaves the room. She starts the shower running, hot.

Outside, the fire is still going. Rachel turns her back to it and touches her fingertips to her mouth. After a moment, she goes to shower.


	9. Exes at a club (NSFW)

“Really?” Sarah says.

Rachel turns away from the bathroom mirror, puts her lipstick back in her bag. The music from the club outside thrums through the chipped tile, the graffiti, thrums through Rachel’s legs and the short hem of her dress and her arms and her neck and thrums through Sarah too.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rachel says.

“You don’t even like this place,” Sarah says. She prowls into the bathroom, arms folded in front of her. Rachel isn’t looking at the skin bared by Sarah’s crop top, she isn’t, she isn’t, (she is) she isn’t. 

“You gonna bring a boytoy here?” Sarah says. “Really?”

“I’m free to go wherever I’d like to go,” Rachel says. “Whenever I’d like to go there. You don’t own this…establishment. Allow me my own entertainment.”

“What’s his name,” Sarah says.

“I don’t see why that matters.”

“Really?” Sarah says. “Or do you just not know it?”

Rachel has forgotten it. But that’s beside the point.

“You seem terribly invested in this,” she says, leaning up against the grungy bathroom sink. She folds one leg over the other. In this dress, in these heels, her legs go on for miles. She’s aware. 

“Why do you care?” Rachel says.

“I don’t,” Sarah says. She unfolds her arms. She steps closer. Rachel watches sweat glisten on Sarah’s neck. There was a time she’d lean closer and put her tongue to it, but it probably isn’t that time anymore.

“You don’t,” Rachel says. “I see. So you’ve cornered me in the women’s bathroom to inform me that you don’t care who I dance with?”

“Sure,” Sarah says. She’s closer now.

“Then consider the message received,” Rachel says. 

Sarah is inches away, now. They’ve had sex in this bathroom before. Up against the sinks. In the bathroom stall. Thrilling, dirty, dangerous. Sarah got on her knees, even though the tile is stained. They went back to the club outside afterwards and they were untouchable, they were gods, they owned this city.

Rachel watches Sarah. Sarah watches Rachel.

“Great,” Sarah says, and storms out of the bathroom. The door opens to scream sound at Rachel, and then swings closed again. Rachel’s hands are sweating on the sink; she blots them with a paper towel, adjusts her hair, goes back outside.

She has lost the boy in the crowd, but that’s fine. He’ll show up, or he won’t; someone will take Rachel home, regardless. She never leaves alone when she’s wearing this dress. She slides into the crowd and it swallows her, bodies rolling against each other to the beat of some song that everyone will have forgotten in a month. The lights claw at the ceilings. She really does hate this place, but it’s Sarah’s favorite so she just keeps coming back.

Hands settle on Rachel’s hips and there’s a boy, body pressed to hers, interest apparent where it’s up against the hem of her dress. Rachel curls her arms around his neck and keeps the rhythm, sends her mind to the place it goes to when a boy touches her. The body hums, warm and awake. All the bodies feed off of each other and Rachel’s heartbeat goes mad with it, wild and delighted despite herself.

“Wanna step out?” he says into her ear.

“No,” Rachel says, and disentangles herself, and cuts deeper into the crowd. She sways into a crowd of drunk co-eds for a moment, ducks around a couple with their hands down each other’s pants, finds a pocket of space that no one is inhabiting and makes it her own. She gets too close to a girl whose dress is almost as short as hers; she lets a boy pant along the back of her neck, moving both of their hips to the rhythm.

She lets a hand pull her away from that boy and deeper into the crowd. When Sarah’s hips settle against hers, her forehead knocking against Rachel’s forehead, Rachel doesn’t pretend to be surprised at it.

“I thought you didn’t care,” she says into the shell of Sarah’s ear. 

“Fuck you,” Sarah says. Her hands are on the bare skin of Rachel’s thighs, pulling Rachel so close she swears she can feel Sarah’s heart beating. Maybe it’s just the music. Doesn’t matter. She splays her hands over the skin of Sarah’s back, feels her spine.

“If you’re so eager to,” she says.

Sarah shudders and nips at the place between Rachel’s chin and neck and the lights are flashing and people are pressed all around them and Sarah’s hands are sliding up Rachel’s skirt, finding lace, finding where Rachel is desperate and starving for this.

“You’re wet,” Sarah says, sounding undone.

Rachel’s hands roam down Sarah’s bare back; she hooks her thumbs in the belt loops of Sarah’s pants. “Mhm,” she sighs.

“You bitch,” Sarah says, and wrecked as she is she’s still unbelievably good with her hands. Rachel melts into her and over her and she’s rocking against Sarah’s fingers and Sarah’s thigh is pressed between her thighs and she digs her nails as tight as she can into Sarah’s back, hers, Sarah is hers, Sarah is all hers and Sarah should have to bear the marks of it.

She groans and Sarah is the only one who can hear it. “You bitch,” Sarah hisses into Rachel’s ear, frantic now, “come on, come on, Rachel, god I love you, come for me babe–”

Rachel does. They’re still moving to the music, and Rachel only drops the rhythm for one dizzy second before she finds it again. One of them moves first and now they’re kissing; Sarah kisses exactly the same, rough and sloppy and feral. She bites at Rachel’s lip and Rachel feels blood sting and blend into her lipstick. She whines, can’t help it. Presses her thigh up between Sarah’s legs. “Come on,” she whispers, and Sarah grinds against her wild. 

“Rachel,” Sarah says. “Rachel, shit. Rachel.”

“Good girl,” Rachel says, and Sarah keens and keeps rolling her hips forward, over and over again. The music is a desperate pounding in the back of Rachel’s brain. She catches the sharp edges of Sarah’s face in the light and she wants them, she needs them, she’ll take them. She presses her mouth to them one by one and swallows them and Sarah comes undone.

Sarah’s hands move back to Rachel’s hips; Rachel’s fingernails leave deep deep grooves that Sarah won’t be able to forget about. “You want this,” Sarah says. “Why the hell d’you keep coming back if you don’t want this? Come out with me again. We own this bloody city, you know we do.”

They move in the same rhythm. Sarah is plastered with sweat and she’s absolutely beautiful and every single piece of her belongs to Rachel.

Rachel leans in close to Sarah’s ear. “I like this more,” she says, and breaks out of Sarah’s hold. She slides through the crowd again, lithe and easy. She leaves Sarah behind her.


	10. Ballet

The tour bus at night. Rachel with her head against the window, asleep. The city lights passing over her face. Sarah: flexing her toes, over and over, to feel the way the blisters strain and almost pop.

\--

They aren’t friends. That’s the most important thing. They’re not friends.

Sarah has friends in the company: she’s got Beth, she’s got Tony, she’s got Alison (sometimes). She hasn’t got Rachel Duncan. No one’s got Rachel Duncan; she doesn’t talk to anyone when they’re not rehearsing, she doesn’t go to the celebration dinners or go dancing -- drink too much -- vomit in the hotel toilet at two in the morning. Sarah has roomed with her a few times on the tour and Rachel hasn’t even spoken to her.

God, though. The way she dances.

Everyone tells Sarah she’s brilliant, so she probably has to believe it. But Rachel...Sarah looks at Rachel and knows she’s good, in her bones. Rachel dances like she’s reading poetry out loud in a language Sarah doesn’t quite understand; she dances like she’s diagramming a skeleton, piece by piece. It’s impossible to describe the arches of her feet, the sketch of her arms, the smooth, slow tilt of her neck. There’s a reason she’s usually their lead -- their Odette, their Giselle. She is a porcelain doll they take out for performances and then put back in her silent tissue paper. Untouchable. Untouchable.

\--

After hours and Sarah is pushing herself too hard, again. Everyone else has left the theatre and she’s turning herself from one end of the stage to the other, feeling the way her body complains as she forces it just a little to far. The trick of the choreography is to make it look like she’s floating -- to keep her steps invisible, so close together she glides. She reaches the curtain and turns around, propels herself back again.

“This seems like a waste of time,” someone says, and Sarah stumbles -- steadies her feet before they can give out on her, betray her. One second out of the music in her head and it’s all gone and she’s alone, clumsy. She comes down from it like a high.

“What?” she says. She looks backstage. Rachel: wrapped in a coat the color of pearls, a creamy white scarf and white tights and grey boots. Like a spotlight in the dark.

“You’re already very good,” Rachel says. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish.”

“I want to be Clara,” Sarah says. Fuck. She didn’t mean to say it -- and especially not to Rachel Duncan, who is going to be Clara. Everyone knows. The _Nutcracker_ auditions aren’t for months and months, but everyone already knows.

Rachel tilts her head to the side. “Ah.”

“So,” Sarah says. She flexes her ankles, sways.

Rachel swallows; the motion flexes the muscles of her throat. She looks away. “Sarah,” she says.

Sarah didn’t know Rachel knew her name.

“Don’t break yourself,” Rachel says. “The company would miss you.” She steps out of the light and back into the shadows of backstage; Sarah hears the door to the outside world open and click shut. Oh.

She stretches out her muscles. She does it again.

\--

Sometimes Rachel looks at her from across the plane, or across the dressing room, or in the studio mirror. Only sometimes, though.

\--

Curtain call for _Giselle_ , the whole crowd applauding in an endless roar. Roses for Rachel. Sarah is made up like a ghost, and she probably won’t even wait to take the makeup off; she’s just going to go find a flat floor and keep going, keep going, keep going until she falls down. The choreography could be tighter. She could do better. The curtain goes down.

She does scrub off her makeup, eventually; she lingers in the building until everyone goes and then she turns on the spotlight and dances in and out of the dust. The Act II set is behind her, a dark and terrible forest. Around, around. She forces herself smaller and tighter and better – she dances too loose – she could have gotten Odile, but not Odette. And no one’s got use for just Odile.

“I’m not a babysitting service,” says Rachel. Sarah stops.

“Then go home,” she says.

She turns to look – Rachel is wearing the same coat, a scarf with a delicate silver pattern that Sarah can’t see.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Rachel says quietly.

“I’m not.”

Rachel steps onto the stage, slow and deliberate. Her boots click. _Do you ever get used to it_ , Sarah wants to say. _Walking flat-footed, do you ever? Sometimes I feel like my body isn’t my own when it’s walking or sitting still, do you ever—_

“At least let me help you,” Rachel says.

“Maybe I don’t want your help,” Sarah says. This is a desperate lie; Rachel smiles like she knows. Her lipstick is a soft pink, barely even noticeable. Their Giselle. Dead and dancing in a graveyard.

“I’m insisting,” Rachel says.

“We’re not friends,” Sarah says. Stating the obvious – only Rachel blinks, quick and barely noticeable. Startled, maybe.

“Of course not,” Rachel says. “Why would we be?”

\--

It turns out that when their lead asks for extra rehearsal time, no one even bats an eye at it. Unfair. But here they are, in the practice room that Rachel has gotten them; Rachel is stretching at the bar, fingers brushing the floor, in her silver-white leotard and her white tights and the faded grey non-color of her shoes. She looks up when she sees Sarah there. She’s wearing makeup. Sarah isn’t – she’s gonna sweat it all off anyways.

“Why are you doing this,” Sarah says, dumping her stuff at the door and shedding her jacket, her legwarmers. She drops herself to the floor and begins the slow process of getting her shoes on.

“That’s an interesting way to turn on someone who’s decided to help you.”

“I saw _Black Swan_.”

After a moment Sarah looks up and at Rachel, whose face is a perfect blank. Then it stutters and some sort of feeling returns to it. “Are you Odette or Odile, in this scenario.”

“I’m Natalie Portman,” Sarah says. “Not really. I’m more the other one. But you know what I mean.”

Rachel straightens up all the way; her feet move into fourth position, and then out again. Like a nervous tic. “I don’t,” she says.

“You haven’t seen _Black Swan_?”

Rachel shakes her head, one small tight gesture.

“Yeah you did,” Sarah says, starting to stretch. “Whole company watched it together, we threw popcorn, we…” _didn’t invite you_. She doesn’t have to say it; she can tell Rachel already knows. Rachel’s face closes off again. Odette outside the party. Coppelia frozen in her chair.

“You’re focusing on your footwork,” she says, “aren’t you. Tightening it. Making it more precise.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Obviously.” She splits her legs, she presses her belly to the floor, she watches Rachel.

Rachel shakes her head: _no, no_. “Transitions,” she says. “Fluidity. You could shine if you focused less on precision and more on the _feeling_. Do you understand.”

Sarah presses her face to the floor and doesn’t answer. God does it ever smell like shit. She lifts her head again, stands, moves to the barre. “Show me,” she says.

Rachel sighs, small. “Alright,” she says, and she does.

\--

The tour bus at night. Rachel looking across the aisle and out the window. When she sees Sarah looking at her, she raises her eyebrows. Then she lifts one hand and her fingers tremble in something like a wave.

\--

Closing night of _Giselle_ , and everyone is yelling backstage – _hurry up, come on, we’re gonna miss the bus, we’re gonna miss our Lyft, hurry up fatass, slowpoke, piece of shit, last night! last fucking night! let’s go!_ Sarah is pulling off the dingy cobwebs of her costume and untangling the paper blossoms from her hair. Beth is waiting for her outside; Sarah can picture her, sitting in the sallow streetlight, prodding at her feet until the bruises burn. Beth hadn’t auditioned for Giselle. She might have gotten it, and it’s probably good that she didn’t.

Sarah pulls on her leather jacket and sweeps her hair over her shoulder, heads for the door. Stops. Backtracks. Finds Rachel sitting in front of her mirror, frozen like a wound-down piece of clockwork, eyes focused on nothing. In the corner of the mirror, a pinned photograph: a man with glasses and a little girl, both of them beaming at the camera.

“That your dad,” Sarah says, without thinking about it – and Rachel startles like a dropped cat, spins around and _stares_ at Sarah. Blinks. Swallows.

“Yes,” she says.

“He doesn’t come to your shows?”

“He’s dead,” Rachel says flatly, and turns back around to consider the mirror. She isn’t even pretending to do anything. She’s just staring at it.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Sorry for your loss.”

“It was years ago.”

“Oh,” Sarah says again. She bounces her shoulder against the doorframe, picks at a bit of peeling paint. “So we’re all going downtown.”

“Enjoy yourselves.”

“You should come,” Sarah says. “You were – amazing out there. If anyone deserves a night off it’s you, yeah?”

“I shouldn’t,” Rachel says. Her eyes dart to Sarah’s and then away again.

“Alright,” Sarah says. She shoves her hands in her pockets, feels her shoulders hunch. _Do you ever—_ but she doesn’t say it. “G’night, Rachel.”

She heads through the dark and echoing corridors of backstage. Her footsteps clomp on the ground; Sarah watches her shadow, watches with surprise as another shadow leaps towards it. When she turns around, Rachel is hanging out of the doorframe. “Wait,” she says. “Wait.”

\--

In the club, the lights flash on and off too fast to track. Distant images:

Rachel’s legs. Rachel’s sleek little while dress.

The press of bodies to Sarah’s body.

The taste of vodka swallowed too fast. _Fuck_ , and _shit_ , and _pour me another one_.

“—I didn’t even love him—”

Sarah holding back Beth’s hair in the dingy bathroom. Alison taking over, giving Sarah that same glance they’ve been giving each other for

The bass throbbing through everything.

“Do you ever—”

“Do you ever—”

The bass throbbing through everything.

Another club. They’ve switched clubs. The bathroom is better. Sarah’s spitting into the sink.

More shots. Sweet like sugarplums.

The flush on Rachel’s face.

In the street at 2am, screaming up into the night sky.

Both of them screaming up into the night sky.

So it’s 2am. Time crashes back into Sarah and she realizes that she’s on the street and it’s 2am and Rachel is there and they are both drunk. She doesn’t know how long she’s been holding Rachel’s hand. She wishes they both weren’t wearing gloves.

“But it’s too cold,” Rachel says. “We have to wear gloves, it’s cold. We could lose a finger.”

“Long as we don’t lose toes.”

“You could dance with nine toes,” Rachel says. “You’d still be beautiful with nine toes.” She sways into Sarah and her shoulder bumps into Sarah’s and her head lands against Sarah’s neck. “I don’t drink,” she says, mouth pressed to Sarah’s skin.

“You’re definitely Natalie Portman.”

“I told you – I told you I don’t know what that means. Stop teasing me. Don’t tease me unless you’re going to do something about it. Everyone is cruel but no one means to be cruel. Don’t be cruel on purpose. That would make me sad.”

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Sarah says. She rests her head against Rachel’s head. “Don’t be sad.”

“I’m always sad,” Rachel says. “It’s a disease. I’m sick. I’m not actually sick. I’m very cold, though. I like your hand.”

“I like your hand,” Sarah says. They stumble into the hotel, up the elevator.

“I don’t remember my room,” Rachel says. “I have to sleep in your bed. I have to. Sarah I’m tired.”

“Okay,” Sarah says, because okay, because part of her is savage and delighted that she did this: she took Rachel and made her into a person just like everyone else, sloppy drunk, sort of sad. Sarah did that.

Sarah manages to get them into her room – god knows where Alison is. Probably pouring a gallon of water down Beth’s throat. Sarah leaves Rachel in Alison’s bed and Rachel lies there like a dropped doll, eyes glassy and watching Sarah.

“You’re going to be a better dancer than I am,” she says, and closes her eyes.

Sarah lies down on the floor. It feels right. She looks at Rachel’s hand, dangling off the bed, dangling towards Sarah’s face. She grabs Rachel’s hand with her hand. She smashes down the part of her that goes _yes, yes, yes_. “That’s impossible,” she says. “You’re magic.”

“No,” Rachel says. “I can’t feel anything. You can feel things. I’m going to make you better than I ever was, and they’ll all forget about me, and then I will lie down. On a beach. I always wanted to go to the beach. Isn’t that funny?”

“Not really,” Sarah says.

“I know,” Rachel says. She wraps her fingers through Sarah’s fingers. They’re still wearing gloves. They should both take off their gloves, so they can touch each other. Sarah wakes up and daylight trickles in thin through the curtains and she doesn’t even remember falling asleep. She’s still on the floor. Has it been hours? Maybe.

She sits up. Everything is stuck to her with sweat. Rachel is still lying on the bed, askew, hair matted to her face, all the lip gloss licked and gnawed off of her lips. Her eyes blink open sleepily and then close with a muffled noise of pain.

“Welcome to hangovers,” Sarah says. Rachel groans.

\--

Sarah orders room service, charges it to the room. They sprawl out over Sarah’s bed in the strange orange dark of closed windows, Rachel’s head on Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah listens to Rachel breathing and Rachel eats a salad and Sarah eats two plates of pancakes and they stay there all day and they watch _Black Swan_ and in the dark Sarah pretends Rachel isn’t crying.

\--

“Again.”

“Piss off.”

It’s summer outside, but the studio is ice-cold. Sweat beads at Sarah’s temples anyways. She hates when she can’t get it – when the rhythm doesn’t go right, when Rachel watches her across the room with her face a flat and despairing shape. She likes it when Rachel smiles; she likes the real smile, the one that curls in from the edges of Rachel’s mouth. It’s a nice smile.

“You’re close,” Rachel says from where she is sitting on the floor. “You’re close.”

“Why are we even doing this,” Sarah says. “ _Giselle_ ’s over.” It isn’t the first time she’s said it, and it probably won’t be the last, but she’s so sick of it – dancing death over and over and over again.

“What else were you planning on auditioning with,” Rachel says. “For Clara.”

“I wasn’t serious,” Sarah says, even though she was.

“You should be,” Rachel says.

“It’s going to be you,” Sarah says. She sits down on the floor, across from Rachel. “Christ, Rachel. It’s always you.”

“Not if I don’t audition,” Rachel says quietly.

“What?”

“It could be you,” Rachel says. “Clara, Sleeping Beauty, the Firebird. They could all be you.”

“Why aren’t you auditioning,” Sarah says.

“I’m tired,” Rachel says, a smile at the edge of her mouth. “And you love it, don’t you? Dancing.”

 

(The pulse of lights like a heartbeat on the ceiling of the club. Sarah is four shots in, at this point, everything a nauseous tilt-a-whirl – every time she gets drunk she remembers being a kid and turning endless spins across the rubbery studio floor before she knew how to pick a point on the wall and focus on it. Everything was so dizzy, and Sarah couldn’t survive it. She can’t survive it. Rachel is next to her at the bar with her head on its glossy wooden surface and Sarah leans over and yells in her ear: “Do you ever feel like dancing is the only time you’re real? Like you’re bloody – useless the rest of the time? Like you don’t mean anything? Like nothing – nothing makes sense, like – do you ever?”

“I hate ballet,” Rachel says, and starts to laugh.)

 

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “God, yeah. Only thing I’m good for.”

“That’s not true,” Rachel says.

“It is,” Sarah says. “It’s the only thing I’m good at and I’m not even good at it, I’m not even good enough to—”

Rachel leans forward and kisses her. It’s an awkward angle; Sarah feels her eyes flutter open and she watches the two of them reflected in the mirror. Without meaning to, she corrects their posture. She meets her own eyes in the mirror. _Oh_ , she thinks, _you idiot_ , and then she closes her eyes and cups Rachel’s face in one hand. She deepens the kiss. Rachel’s mouth opens against hers, shy and slow. She touches her fingers to the bare goosebumping skin of Sarah’s arm.

She leans back. “You’re more than this, Sarah,” she says, her voice a rasp.

“So are you,” Sarah says, and Rachel just leans forward and kisses her again.

\--

Summer blurs into one long golden haze of soft-serve ice cream and Rachel’s hand slipping in her hand and their bruised and blistered feet being warmed up by the sun; when Sarah remembers it later she’ll mostly remember the color of the light, won’t be able to pull apart the feeling of it on her shoulders from the way it slanted in through the windows in the studio room. Again, again. Rachel breaks open Giselle’s choreography with her hands to give it to Sarah and Sarah dances Giselle and kills her and brings her back to life again and Rachel says Good and Rachel says Good and Rachel stops Sarah and pins her to the mirror and smashes her mouth into Sarah’s mouth and it is: good.

\--

“I’m not going to get it,” Sarah says, “this is stupid, this is ridiculous, I’m bloody – corps material, there’s no way I’m gonna – god, this is so stupid, I’m so – mmph—” and Rachel is kissing her, her thumb moving slow and sweet against Sarah’s chin.

“You are stupid,” Rachel says. “Don’t be stupid. You know exactly what to do.”

“Hey Rachel?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. For – thanks.”

Rachel tilts her head to the side and watches Sarah and – there – there’s the smile, small and sweet. “Thank _you_ ,” she says.

“Well…thank _you_.”

“You’re stalling,” Rachel says. “If you miss the audition I will drop out of the company. Go! Go.”

Sarah moves to go and then comes back, kisses Rachel again. Rachel nips at her lip, and when Sarah leans back they’re both smiling.

\--

Curtain call for _The Nutcracker_ , the whole crowd applauding in an endless roar. People keep throwing roses at Sarah and she can’t stop laughing with it, hysterical and shocked. When she looks down the line she can see Rachel smiling at her, and it takes everything to not just cross the stage and kiss her. Sarah manages, somehow.

 

( _This is going to be my last tour_ , Rachel had said.

 _Oh_ , Sarah said. _Oh. So we’re – we’re not—_

 _Don’t be stupid_ , Rachel had said. _I’ll come to every single one of your shows. Who else would help you improve your technique?_ )

 

She closes her eyes and dips down into another curtsy. The applause goes on and on and on.

\--

The tour bus at night. Rachel is asleep in the seat next to Sarah, her head resting on Sarah’s shoulder, her hand curled around Sarah’s hand. Sarah looks out the window. The lights outside are spotlights, and they are all shining on her.


	11. Fake dating

“It won’t be for very long,” Rachel says. “Mother leaves town next week, and then you can return to whatever…primordial muck you crawled from.” She’s brushing her hair in the mirror, smoothing down the sleek edge of it with an expensive-looking brush. Sarah didn’t even know brushes could look expensive, but there you go.

“And you’re paying,” she says warily, arms folded across her chest.

“Yes. Primarily for your discretion.”

“So only your mum’s supposed to know that you’re a lesbian dating a high school dropout from Brixton.”

Rachel brightens. “You’re from  _Brixton_ ,” she breathes delightedly.

This is a terrible idea.

“Christ,” Sarah mutters, and paces away from Rachel deeper into her beautiful blue-and-ivory apartment. She clenches and unclenches her hands into fists as she goes, considers the amount of money Rachel is paying her. It’s not a small amount of money. Sarah’s gotten less money for worse things. It isn’t even prostitution, really – not like she’s putting out for this bitch, no matter how hot she is. They’re gonna hold hands. Rachel’s gonna give Sarah a few months of rent. That’s it.

“Relax,” Rachel murmurs, gently brushing a few strands of hair out of her face. “Just be yourself.”

“Piss  _off_.”

“Yes, exactly like that.”

* * *

Rachel’s mother is a frail-looking old woman who comes dragging a man half her age behind her. Boytoy? Rachel’s brother? Sarah can’t tell. The two of them exchange looks of misery, taking the remaining seats as Rachel and her mother sit down across the dinner table from one another.

“Mother,” Rachel says. “You’re looking well. I’m impressed. Women of your age usually look considerably closer to death.”

The man makes a constipated face and looks down at his napkin. He unfolds it and begins folding it into something complicated and artistic-looking. Sarah desperately looks for a waiter she can flag down. Not like she’s footing the bill for the amount of alcohol she’s going to need to make it through this.

“Hello, Rachel,” sighs Rachel’s mother. “Still using barbs to mask your own insecurities, I see.”

“Susan,” says the man.

“Ira,” says Rachel. “The Botox is much less noticeable this time around.”

Ira closes his mouth. 

“Really, Rachel,” says Susan. “You’re going to behave like this in front of your…” The pause lasts an uncomfortably long time as Rachel’s mother stares at Sarah, blinks, and then says very slowly: “guest?”

“Girlfriend,” Rachel says, and takes a sip of water.

“Oi oi,” Sarah says. “I’m Sarah. Nice to meet you.” She watches out of the corner of her eye as Rachel smirks around the edge of her glass.

“Is this how you planned to tell us about your…proclivities?” Susan says. “Honestly, Rachel, leave the poor woman out of it.”

“If I hadn’t brought her,” Rachel says, “would you ever have accepted it? Or would you have buried your head in the sand as long as humanly possible, hoping that eventually your daughter would be  _normal?_ ”

Considering she’s lying, the words come out sounding very real: sincere and pained and furious. Shit. She’s a good actress. Sarah eyes her with new respect before she manages to grab a waiter’s sleeve and beg for bourbon. The waiter leaves. Sarah tunes back in to hear: “—after another. Ever since your father died, it’s been nothing but desperate attempts for my attention. Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“Of course you would make this all about you,” Rachel hisses, like it isn’t actually all about Susan. “There is nothing I could do that would get anything resembling approval, is there? Would you even take the time to get to know Sarah? Of course you wouldn’t, because she is just another reason on a list of reasons why I’ve  _failed_  you.”

“Stop,” Ira says. “Both of you. This is ridiculous, look at what you’re doing to Sarah–”

Sarah, desperately chugging her bourbon, flaps a hand:  _don’t worry about it_.

“You haven’t failed me because you’re a  _lesbian_ , Rachel,” Susan hisses – though she does lower her voice on the word  _lesbian_ , like she doesn’t want to touch it with her lips or teeth or tongue. “You have failed me because you are  _damaged_. I don’t know when it happened – I don’t know if your father was responsible, or if it was something you picked up in boarding school, but somewhere along the line I failed to recognize you. Again and again I try to build bridges with you, and you–”

She keeps going. Sarah watches as Rachel’s face goes through a series of tiny collapses, like a city under her skin is experiencing earthquakes. Sarah’s fists clench. The bourbon burns up her throat.

“Hey,” she says, and when that doesn’t work: “ _Hey_.”

All three of them turn to look at Sarah, wearing near-identical looks of blank confusion – like Sarah is an animal that just started talking.

“You don’t deserve her,” Sarah says. “Rachel’s bloody – smart, and she’s–” (fuck Sarah knows nothing about her) “gorgeous, and she’s – successful–” (probably?!) “–and you know what, she’s great in bed. You can piss off. Surprised she’s even kept you around, when you’re this much of a bitch.” She stands up, shoves her chair back, drains the rest of her bourbon and slaps the glass down on the table. “Come on,” she says, holding out her hand for Rachel. Rachel stares at her blankly. “Babe,” Sarah says, hoping Susan can’t tell how wobbly and sour the word comes out.

Rachel blinks, slow, and she looks at Susan, and she takes Sarah’s hand. Sarah drags her out of the restaurant, past the snooty-looking maitre d’ and into the street. She stops on the cold sidewalk, catches her breath. Rachel folds her arms around herself and pivots slowly back and forth. “That wasn’t in your job description,” she says.

“Didn’t tell me your mom was a cunt.”

“I think I implied it,” Rachel says faintly.

Sarah starts walking away from the restaurant. After a second, Rachel follows her. Her arms are still folded around her ribcage.

“This isn’t funny for me,” Sarah says. “I’m bi. I’m not – I’m not  _damaged_ , Christ.” She folds her hands behind her head for a few steps, feels the weight and warmth of something cradling her skull.

Rachel laughs, once, a small hysterical sound.

“Oh  _come on_ ,” Sarah starts, rounding on Rachel. “That just another thing to laugh about, for you? Another way I’m a freak–”

“I’m a lesbian,” Rachel says.

Sarah stops. Under the faint light of a streetlight Rachel is smiling at her, manic and terribly sad. “Oh,” she says, “yes. You weren’t expecting that, were you?” She starts walking again. “You saw what you went through tonight,” she says. “With her. I couldn’t – not to someone I – so. I thought I would start with the worst possible option. That way, after you…anyone I…” She sucks in a breath. “As it turns out it doesn’t matter. I’ll pay you for tonight and you’re free to go. Consider our agreement revoked. You’ve done more than enough.”

Wordlessly, Sarah shucks her jacket and offers it to Rachel. Rachel stares at it like it’s a foreign object. “You’re shaking,” Sarah says.

Rachel is. Her jaw tightens and she takes the jacket, slings it over her expensive dress, sticks her hands in its pockets. Sarah can’t help staring for a second too long: the rough leather, the long pale line of Rachel’s neck. The origami folds of her dress under the zipper. Fuck. Sarah looks away again, but Rachel catches her looking.

“Don’t pity me,” she says. “Don’t you dare.”

“I don’t,” Sarah says. She doesn’t know if it’s true. “You don’t have to pay me, alright?”

“I’m going to pay you,” Rachel says through her teeth. “You upheld the terms. Admirably. I am not going to let you decline payment out of some misplaced chivalry.”

“Christ, Rachel,” Sarah breathes. She kicks a stray pebble across the ground. After a second she says, uncomfortably: “You’re not going back, are you?”

Rachel doesn’t say anything.

“Rachel. She called you damaged.”

“I’m not going to let her win,” Rachel says.

“Then – I’m going with you,” Sarah says. “Bloody hell. She’s a right bitch. You’re not goin’ back in there alone.”

“No,” Rachel says.

“Yeah, actually,” Sarah says.

“Oh,  _honestly_ ,” Rachel says. “Is this out of pity, or because you’re projecting onto me? Whatever the reason, I don’t need this. Thank you for your  _time_ , Sarah.”

“Would you quit,” Sarah says, “for just a minute? Just a bloody minute? Could you think that maybe I just – don’t want you to have to go through this shit alone.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“I could,” Sarah says, her voice too small. “If you’d let me.”

“Oh,” Rachel says. Her voice is even smaller. She exhales a sputtery breath through her nose and hunches herself into Sarah’s jacket.

“It’s only going to get worse from here,” she says, after a minute where the only sounds are their feet against the sidewalk. “She’s smelled blood. She won’t stop until she’s drawn more of it.”

Sarah shrugs a shoulder. “I can take her.”

Rachel huffs out a breath. “Where are we going,” she says.

“Well,” Sarah says. “Usually when shit goes wrong I go get trashed at a terrible bar and hope it all goes away. Dunno what you do.”

“Nothing that sounds nearly as appealing as that,” Rachel says. “Lead the way.”

“Alright,” Sarah says. She reaches across the space between them and grabs Rachel’s hand. It’s much warmer than Sarah’s, and the fingers slowly lace with Sarah’s. Rachel squeezes, once, and doesn’t let go.


	12. Swapped phones

Rachel realizes ten minutes into her flight to Taiwan that the iPhone is dead. Forty seconds after that, she realizes she has no charger. Goddamnit. Thankfully she uses the Blackberry for work-related email, scheduling, etc., but – stupidly – she’s upset because she’d downloaded three novels onto the iPhone. Now she has nothing but a useless brick and a private plane full of Android users. And work emails, because she’ll never be free of those.

Rachel realizes eighteen hours later – after making it to Taiwan, being driven to the hotel, asking for a charger, plugging the phone in, and having it wake up – that it isn’t her phone.

God _damnit_.

cos  
>sarah did you ditch me  
>sarah  
>sarah oh my GOD  
>SARAH  
>SARAH  
>SARAH  
>SARAH  
>SARAH

cos  
>okay can you at least answer me?? i’m worried  
>i know it was my idea to drag you to a gay bar and i’m sorry if it was a shitty decision  
>if you’re not cool with it that’s totally fine!!! no judgment  
>but can you answer your phone please

cos  
>sarah? if you don’t answer in like ten minutes i’m calling siobhan  
>and then the police

cos  
>siobhan says you’re HOME sarah

s  
>this is sarah  
>you have my phone  
>passcodes 6653 can you text me when you get this

s  
>hey  
>sorry i know its dead  
>do you not have a charger

cos  
>yo  
>what’s up  
>sarah says you have her phone can you uh  
>not give her shit about the gay bar thing pretend you never got those messages

s  
>did you steal my phone you piece of shit   
>i will KILL you

Rachel unlocks the phone.  _I didnt steal your phone._ she types.  _Im in Taiwan._

Two seconds later, her phone buzzes.  _bullshit_

_I dont know how to prove that to you._

_send me a snap_

_I dont know what that means._  Rachel types, feeling like an idiot. She toes off her heels and shucks her blazer, picks up the phone again.  _Do you have my phone._  she types.

 _??_ she gets, and an attached photo: a completely unordinary iPhone. Could be anyone’s.

 _wallpapers just the original shit_ , says Sarah.

_Thats mine._

_you didnt change the bg or anything_

_Not the point. I am in Taiwan. I can exchange the phone with you when I return._

_when are you coming back_

_Next week._

_a WEEK are you serious_  
i cant use my foster mums phone for a week   
shed kill me  


_Im sorry. Theres nothing I can do._

_you can send me a snapchat  
christ hold on_

A second later, she gets a notification on Sarah’s phone: one new Snapchat from Siobhan. She clicks it, opens it. A woman Rachel’s age points down to the corner, where text says TORONTO in big letters. She’s actually very pretty, Rachel notes, which she probably shouldn’t notice. Then the picture vanishes.

It doesn’t take her long to figure the whole thing out. She sends a return message to Sarah: her face, blue and red text that proudly blares TAIPEI.

 _oh shit youre my age_ , Sarah says a few seconds later.

 _oh shit youre actually in taiwan_  
shit  
sorry

_Ill be back next Tuesday._

_why are you in taiwan_

_Work._

_do you like it_

_I can get your phone back to you next Tuesday._

_whats your name_

_Rachel._ Rachel types, and flips the phone face-down. She has to shower. She has to be changed for this business dinner. She has been on a plane for almost an entire day, and she can’t fall asleep during this dinner, so she has to shower. Right.

The phone keeps buzzing. Rachel puts it on silent and leaves the room.

–

s  
>im sarah  
>you knew that  
>sorry that was stupid  
>what do you do

s  
>oh shit is it bedtime in taiwan  
>i checked its 3pm  
>wait you have work  
>sorry

One missed call: felix

felix  
>answer ur PHONE 

One Snapchat: felix

Tinder: Somebody Liked you!

s  
>hey are you ignoring these

–

 _No_. Rachel lies, six hours later.  _Im busy_. That one is true. The board she’s been told to meet with is terribly uncooperative, and her feet hurt from her heels. Her music is on the iPhone. All in all, things are terrible.

Sarah buzzes back almost immediately.  _with what_

_Work._

_wow you really dont want to talk about it_

_We arent friends._

_yeah but you took my phone_  
my foster mums got a shitty data plan and shitty apps  
so youre my only entertainment

Despite herself, Rachel feels a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth. She sits in the center of the enormous hotel bed, stretches her bare feet out to the edge, flexes her toes. _Patent law._

_never mind  
youre not entertaining_

A second later:  _that was a joke_

_Its not a joke. Dreadfully boring._

_why do it_

_Im good at it._

_and you get to go to taiwan_

_And I get to go to Taiwan._

Rachel bites at the inside of her lip for a second, and types:  _Youre very popular. Your phone keeps getting alerts._

_oh shit i forgot to tell people my phone was gone_

_Whats Tinder._

_uuuuuuuuuuuuh  
yknow_

_I could open the application and find out._

_DONT DO THAT_  
its a dating app  
but like  
for hookups  
so not dating  
are you happy now  
i had to do that on my mums phone

Rachel laughs; she’s surprised at it.  _Delighted_.

_bloody sadist_

_Is there an option for that on Tinder._

_lmfao_

–

They keep texting, for some reason. Sarah’s phone stops getting texts, but Tinder keeps giving her alerts – she’s very popular, she keeps getting matches. Rachel isn’t surprised. She keeps thinking about the picture Sarah had sent her, the color of her eyes. Stupid.

She’s gay, though. Probably. Or at least interested. That’s what Cos said, whoever that is. Exploring, maybe.

If Rachel opened up the application–

But that’s stupid, she’s not going to do that.

–

_Everyone on every board is a complete idiot. I am the only sane or rational person employed in a high-ranking position at any company. Ever._

_shit tell us how you really feel_

–

_i dunno sometimes i just feel like im not even gonna amount to anything_

_Shes too harsh on you._

_really dont think she is_

_Sarah. She is._

_–_

_You cant really see any stars out here. Too much smog._

_i dont think ive ever seen stars  
mum took us camping sometimes but it was too close to the city_

_My parents would show me sometimes. When I was young. We had a telescope._

_sounds nice_

_It was._

_–_

_hey shouldnt you be asleep_

_Shouldnt you?_

_shit good point  
i wont tell if you wont_

_Deal._

–

A video: an iPhone cradled in someone’s lap, tilted upwards to expose part of a woman’s face. She’s middle-aged; her hair is very red.

“All I want to know is who’s so fascinating that you keep texting them all day – don’t think I haven’t seen you laughing at that phone, Sarah. I’m only  _curious_.”

“Oh,” says a voice offscreen, “she’s  _curious_  now.” It’s a nice voice. A low rasp. Both voices are British – which is strange, considering Toronto.

“I might be.”

“Woman’s gotta have a few secrets, Siobhan.”

“That’s my bloody phone, y’know.”

 _You had better delete these logs from her phone when you give it back._ Rachel types.

 _not an idiot_  Sarah types.  _funny though isnt it  
she thinks ive got a new boyfriend or somethin_

_Ha._

_ha_

(Rachel watches the video a few times. Just the part where Sarah’s talking.  _Woman’s gotta have a few secrets, Siobhan_. The growl of her voice. 

Ha.)

–

 _Ill be back in town tomorrow._ Rachel types, curled up in bed, all the lights off. She should be asleep. She watches the typing bubble pop up and disappear, over and over.

 _so_  Sarah types, and then nothing else.

_When and where would you like to exchange._

_dunno_  
whenever  
wherever  
hey i didnt know when to tell you this but i should fore we switch  
i think your phone might be broken  
doesnt get alerts or anything

_Oh, its not broken. I just dont have any friends._

_oh_  
well  
yknow  
youve  
got me  
i guess  
if you want  
not that were friends or anything that would be weird ive only been texting you for five days  
but like

_Id like that._

_if you need someone to  
oh shit really_

_Yes._

_oh_

_When you send twenty texts at once you leave yourself open to interruptions._

_piss off_  
theres a bar downtown  
bobbys  
dunno if youve been there probably not  
meet you there tomorrow night?  
like 7 or 8

_Alright. 8pm._

_k  
safe flight_

_Thank you._

–

Rachel sits down on the plane, looks left, looks right, opens the Tinder application. A photograph of Sarah that she looks at for too long – the angle of her smirk, the makeup smeared around her eyes. Her hair is longer in the photo than it was in the picture she sent Rachel. Side braids. It works for her. Rachel scrolls down – down – there. 

Ah.

After she’s done looking at Sarah’s profile, she goes back and deletes all of Sarah’s unread Tinder notifications. Out of spite.

–

The bar is loud and crowded, and Sarah isn’t there. Rachel sits down at a table in the corner and studies her drink intently. God, she misses the iPhone. She has nothing to stare at except her work phone, and refuses to answer any more work emails a scant few hours off of the plane. She drinks more wine. Minutes pass. More minutes pass, and then half an hour.

 _??_ she texts.

_have you finally gotten your phone back, then?_

_I havent, because you havent arrived to give it to me._

_oh, you definitely aren’t sarah. look at that punctuation._

_Who is this._

_the woman who owns this bloody phone.  
are you her mystery correspondent, then?_

_I dont know._

_are you who she’s been texting all day every day for the entire week._

_Im sorry if your bill is abnormally high. I can pay._

_i’ve got unlimited, love.  
you have to when your foster daughter types like she’s confused the “enter” key with a comma._

_She really does._

_i like you, i think. or i will once i get the chance to._  
but if you hurt my foster daughter in any way  
i do own a rifle.  
safe meeting, love.

 _Excuse me?_ Rachel types, but no one responds. She blinks at the phone and then she looks up and blinks and Sarah is standing there, holding a bourbon, her other hand fidgeting absentmindedly at the bottom of her shorts. “Uh,” she says. “Hey.”

“I was beginning to think you’d never arrive.”

“You’re British,” Sarah says, blinking.

“You never realized this,” Rachel says, “from our extended conversation about tea.”

Sarah laughs, a full round sound. “Piss off,” she says, and sits in the chair across from Rachel at the table. She grins at Rachel, goofy and bright. “Hey,” she says.

Rachel smiles back. She thinks her smile is also ridiculous. “Hey,” she says.

“This is weird.”

“Oh, I agree,” Rachel says. “May I have my phone?”

Sarah pulls an iPhone out of her pocket and begins to tap it on the table, spinning it, tapping it, spinning it. “I wasn’t gonna come,” she says. Before Rachel can respond, Sarah says: “I know, it’s shitty, I wasn’t gonna – I wasn’t gonna bring your phone back. I’m the worst. I just–” In one quick breath: “Ididn’twannastoptexting. So.”

“Oh,” Rachel says. “Were we going to?”

Sarah shrugs, an overlarge gesture. “Dunno. Were we? Dunno.” She looks at Rachel and then away again. “You’re – you, and I’m – yeah. Here’s your phone.” She shoves it across the table.

Rachel takes it and puts her hand on Sarah’s phone – doesn’t move it. “I want to be your friend,” she says. “I thought that was clear. Did I misspeak?”

“You hadn’t met me,” Sarah says.

“Well, I’ve met you,” Rachel says. She pushes the phone across, gently. “Stay. Have your drink. We can talk, and I can marvel at your coherency.”

Sarah lets out a desperate gulp of a laugh. She takes her phone and shoves it in her pocket. “I’m not,” she says. “Uh. Coherent.”

“Yes, that was the joke.”

Sarah flips her off, and then lowers her hand to spin her glass around. Rachel swallows, says: “And we could do it again.”

“Do what?”

“Drink. Like this. Not at this bar. At an actual bar. If you were – amenable.”

“Bobby’s is an actual bar,” Sarah says, and then a smile swallows up her whole mouth. “Really. You want to?”

Rachel reaches out and puts her fingertips against Sarah’s knuckles. “It pains me to say this,” she says, “but I’ve grown very fond of you. Yes. I’d like to.”

“Me too,” Sarah murmurs, and watches Rachel’s fingers on her hand. Rachel moves her hand away and Sarah moves her smile to Rachel. Rachel smiles back.

“So,” Sarah says, leaning back and drinking from her glass, “now’s the chance to tell me all about patent law.”

“You’re going to regret asking that.”

“I already do,” Sarah says. Rachel takes a sip of wine, and starts explaining.


	13. Pirates (NSFW)

The brig of the  _Orphan_  is ice-cold and has a persistent leak in its ceiling that seems to vary when and where it drips only to spite Rachel. She is currently pacing the floor – moldy, also cold – and eyeing the bucket in the corner with deep reluctance and disgust. Her uniform is going to get filthy. Again.

“Welcome back,” says Sarah from outside the bars.

“What have you done with my ship.”

“Torched it. Hope you weren’t attached.”

“Would it matter if I was?”

Rachel gives up, and looks at Sarah. Sarah is lounging against the bars, her tattered coat shoved up to bare her forearms. Unlike most of her kind, she doesn’t wear rings; she does have beads in her hair, though, and they click when she tilts her head. When she grins Rachel can see the flash of her one gold tooth. “So how’ve you been,” Sarah says. “It’s been months.”

“You are annoyingly difficult to track down.”

“Not for lack of trying, yeah?”

Rachel draws her chin up and paces to the other side of the bars. They haven’t taken her boots, so she still has just a little height over Sarah. “I am going to bring you in,” she says.

Sarah drums her fingers against the bar. “Uh huh.”

“You will taste justice.”

“Uh huh.”

“You can’t get away with–mmf,” Rachel says, because Sarah has leaned through the bars and kissed Rachel on the mouth. Rachel steps back immediately. Her face is red. “What are you doing,” she says.

Sarah raises her eyebrows, looking bored. “What d’you think,” she says.

Rachel swallows. “That’s not happening again.”

Sarah laughs, full-throated, her head tipping back. “Oh  _come on_ ,” she says. “You’ve said that every bloody time, you can’t still be  _trying_  that shite!”

“It was a mistake,” Rachel says. “I am an officer of the Queen’s Navy. You are piratical scum. I should never have–”

“But you did,” Sarah says. “What, eight times? Nine times? Holy  _shit_ , Rachel.” She sways away from the bars. “Fine. Rot in the bloody brig. See if I care.” She swaggers off towards the staircase. 

“Let me  _out_.”

Sarah grins at her, tooth and gold. Rachel’s stomach swoops abruptly at the sight of that smile and she closes her eyes, resigns herself to the warmth that’s coiling up in her belly. Again. She resigns herself,  _again_. “Sarah,” she says. “Please.”

Sarah takes a step closer. “Please?”

“ _Please_ come inside and let me leave marks that your shipmates will tease you about for the next two weeks.”

Sarah licks her lips, once, a quick flash of tongue. “Well,” she says, “when you say it like that.” She tosses a ring of keys into her hand and unlocks Rachel’s jail cell, steps inside with a neat flourish, closes the door behind her. She’s close enough to send Rachel’s heartrate spiking; she can see the gold detailing on Sarah’s beads, the threads at the edge of Sarah’s coat.

“Give us a kiss, love,” Sarah says, and Rachel shoves her against the moldy wall and shoves her mouth against Sarah’s. “I hate you,” she hisses, bringing her mouth to Sarah’s over and over. “You  _stupid_ pirate.”

Sarah’s answer is grabbing Rachel’s behind, squeezing. “Missed you,” she says, grinning against Rachel’s mouth. “Not your talk. But the rest of you. Missed  _this_  especially.”

Rachel kisses her again, bites Sarah’s lip until it splits open. She licks Sarah’s blood and she licks Sarah’s stupid gold tooth and it all tastes the same: metal. She slides her hands under Sarah’s coat, her ragged shirt, scratches her nails hard down Sarah’s back. Sarah groans and works her thigh between Rachel’s legs, grinds it up until Rachel whines against her mouth.

“Did you miss me,” Sarah breathes.

“Never,” Rachel says, “not once,” and she works her hands up to dig her nails into Sarah’s breasts. Sarah sputters out a high, thin sound.

“You  _bitch_ ,” she says, sounding pleased with it. Rachel ducks her head and bites down hard on Sarah’s neck, sucks until she can feel a livid mark blooming on the skin. Good. She keeps clawing at Sarah’s skin, stroking the pads of her fingers over the skin. She can feel her hips moving frantic, making her rut against Sarah’s leg like an animal.

“Come on,” Sarah breathes, “Rachel, come on, be nice–”

Rachel bites down even harder on another patch of open skin, but obligingly spares a hand to work down the front of Sarah’s trousers. The only consolation to how desperate she feels is the way that Sarah starts bucking her hips the second Rachel’s fingertips brush against her. “ _Rachel_ ,” she groans. “’t’s not fair, not fair,  _ah_  shit, like that, please–”

Rachel makes a guttural sound and comes, manages to stop thrashing. She sucks another bruise into Sarah’s throat. “I’m always going to find you,” she whispers. “Always. No one else is going to catch you. Only me.”

Sarah laughs, breathy and cruel. “No one’s ever gonna catch me,” she says. “Not even you. God I love it when you try – god I – mmn.” She shudders and then goes limp, boneless. Rachel leans back and watches Sarah droop against the wall.

“Holy shit,” Sarah wheezes. Rachel holds out her hand and Sarah sucks the fingers into her mouth, watches Rachel the whole time. Rachel is fine. Rachel is not affected by this. Rachel is never doing this again, ever again.

Her fingers emerge from Sarah’s mouth with a wet pop. Sarah cups Rachel’s skull with one hand, pulls her in, kisses her. Her blood is probably smeared over both of their mouths, by this point. She tastes like a sword unsheathed. Rachel’s. No, that’s wrong, she shouldn’t think that. But she is Rachel’s.

Sarah leans back again, licks her lips. “I should keep you here,” she says. “Lock you up. I should.”

Rachel steps back. “Are you going to open the cell or not,” she says.

Sarah raises her eyebrows, smiles that same damnable smile at Rachel again. She twirls the ring of keys around her finger and opens the cell door. “Captain,” she says, sweeping her arm out grandly.

“It’s  _Commodore_ ,” Rachel says, stepping through and back out into the free world. The air tastes about the same. It really is awful down here.

“Shit, ‘scuse me,  _Commodore_ ,” Sarah says. She clangs the cell door closed behind her and starts jumping up the stairs towards the deck. “Good news, we actually got a bird out with your ransom this time. Shouldn’t take long.”

“I can’t wait,” Rachel says dryly.

“Don’t worry,” Sarah says. “Everyone knows you’re gonna miss me.” She vanishes up the stairs, beads clicking. Rachel sighs – resigned – and follows her.


	14. Fake dating PART 2

Sarah comes back two days later. Rachel really wasn’t expecting her to. She was expecting it so little, in fact, that when she opens the door she doesn’t even have Sarah’s money prepared. “I can’t pay you yet,” she says. 

“Bloody hell,” Sarah says, and shoves past her into Rachel’s apartment.

“I told you I don’t need the money,” she calls over her shoulder, heading unerringly towards Rachel’s drinks cabinet. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Rachel says. “Don’t accept less than you’re worth.” Despite herself she follows Sarah anyways. When she first saw Sarah, she’d thought Sarah was perfect: the tangled hair and the constant scowl, the reek of feral poverty. Now she doesn’t know. Sarah has a nice smile. Sarah had snarled at Rachel’s mother, just because she’d thought Rachel deserved better. Sarah thinks Rachel deserves better. She’d walked Rachel home, after they’d both gotten too drunk at that bar:  _you’re gonna get pickpocketed six ways to Sunday lookin’ like that, c’mon._

Rachel doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

“I’m worth this,” Sarah says, brandishing an unopened bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. (Rachel hates whiskey.) (Why does she even  _have_  whiskey.) “There, deal struck, bargain – whatever. ‘t’s done. Anything else you wanna tell me about your mum before we go get lunch with ‘er.”

Rachel stares at Sarah. She keeps her spine straight and her breathing steady and she waits for it: the moment Sarah realizes she is in a stupid situation for no conceivable reason and leaves Rachel there. Sarah just keeps looking at her. She waggles the bottle back and forth a little bit. “You opposed,” she says. “Am I not allowed to take this or somethin’.”

“No,” Rachel says, “it’s yours. Please take it off of my hands.” She walks by Sarah and over to her vanity, just to give herself something to do. Her makeup has been applied for twenty minutes. Rachel is going to meet with her mother; of course she’d put on armor already.

“It’s good shit,” Sarah says.

“You’d appreciate it more than I would.”

“Fine,” Sarah says, and cracks the lid and drinks. Rachel watches Sarah reflected in the mirror, tipping her head back to swig from the bottle.

 _I’m bi_ , Sarah had said, fists out, spitting it out like a shard of tooth in a street fight. Like it was a weapon she could use. Like it wasn’t a private wound she had to keep buried.  _I’m bi_.

Rachel looks away, back to her own reflection. She swears she can still see the echoes of stress lines, even with the layers of expensive makeup. Take it off and start over? No, of course not, that would be stupid.

“Don’t drink the whole bottle,” she says, and after a moment of consideration: “Please.”

The bottlemouth leaves Sarah’s mouth with a wet  _pop_. “Relax,” Sarah says, wiping the back of her wrist across her mouth. “’m not gonna get wasted before lunch. I’m good at fakin’ drunk, though, if that’s what you want.”

“You can keep that trick in reserve, thank you.”

Suddenly Sarah is there – too close – propped up against the wall. She puts the bottle down with a solid thud on Rachel’s vanity. “Hey,” she says. “Relax. Seriously. Can you do that, Rachel?”

“Not really,” Rachel says. “You’ve only known me for a day or so, and because of that I’ll forgive you the question.”

Sarah hesitates for a moment, and then puts her hand on Rachel’s arm. Pats it. Takes her hand away again. “It’ll be fine,” she says.

Rachel looks at her sideways.

“Okay, no it won’t,” Sarah says, “but you’ll survive. ‘n I’ll survive. And your mum’ll probably survive, cockroaches usually make it through the apocalypse.”

Rachel feels her lips twitching into a smile, and bites down on them to stop it. “I resent the implication,” she says. “Cockroaches have hearts.”

“Good one,” Sarah says, the words amused and utterly sarcastic.

“Thank you,” Rachel says with dignity. She puts her hands flat on the vanity. “Are you sure you’re alright with this,” she says.

“It’s good whiskey,” Sarah says.

“Alright,” Rachel says, and leads them to the car.

* * *

Sarah puts her hand in the small of Rachel’s back when they reach the restaurant; it flops there like a dead fish, as if Sarah isn’t certain whether to immediately jerk her hand back or to press it firmly against Rachel’s bones. Rachel doesn’t know either, so she lets Sarah leave it there.

Rachel’s mother is already sitting at the table, alone. She is surveying the restaurant with a flat moue of distaste, eyes flicking from person to person. She is so old, now; it’s baffling. Rachel keeps almost mistaking her for frail. Soft. Her mistake.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” she says, sitting down – putting fingertips against Sarah’s wrist – sitting down. Unfolding her napkin onto her lap. “Have you had your vaccinations? I’ve heard same-gender attraction is contagious.”

Susan sighs, looks about two seconds from rolling her eyes like the teenage girl Rachel never got the chance to be. “Ira,” she says, “says that I was too harsh. With my initial response to your… _coming out_.”

“My, my,” Rachel says. “Was that an apology? I swear I could almost sense one in that speech. Somewhere. Distantly.”

Susan sighs again. Soon it’ll be a record. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” she says, tipping her chin up, “for implying that your – choice – is something to be ashamed of. Will you forgive me?”

Rachel can feel Sarah dark and heavy as a stormcloud on her right side. “I’m not the only one who deserves an apology,” Rachel says softly.

The waitress, utterly failing to sense the mood, descends and asks in a chipper voice if they’d like drinks and if they’ve decided yet what they’re in the mood for today?

Susan orders the special.

Rachel orders a salad.

Sarah orders the steak, yeah, extra rare, cheers.

During this entire recital, Susan stares at Sarah. Rachel digs her fingernails into her palm and thus manages to restrain herself from snarling something stupid, like:  _what right do you have to judge her, when she’s obviously so much better than you? when have you ever been kind? when have you ever moved to anyone else’s defense?_

“Sarah,” says Rachel’s mother, very slowly. “I’m sorry that you had to see me like that. Last night. I’m happy that Rachel has found – someone. What is it that you said you did?”

“High school dropout,” Sarah says, slouching low in her seat, eyes hooded. She looks like a lion. She’s really much prettier than she should be, considering the hair. Rachel looks away, clocks the reaction on Susan’s face.

“I see.”

“Looking for mechanics work,” Sarah says. “I’m good with my hands.” She manages to say the last with perfect nonchalance, and Rachel has to take a sip of water to prevent herself from bursting into hysterical laughter. It’s a strange and terrifying escalation, from the careful avoidance of pronouns at the dinner table to Sarah spouting baldfaced innuendo to Rachel’s mother. She wishes she’d had some of the whiskey, so this situation could feel more comfortably surreal.

“Rachel,” Susan says. “You cannot be–”

“Is something funny?” Sarah says, with the same casual tone balanced on the edge of a knife. “You disrespecting my choice of profession? Ma’am?”

“Of course not,” Susan says.

“I’m sure she would never,” Rachel says, voice very low.

“How exactly did you two meet?” Susan says. The veins in her neck are straining, and her jaw is tight. Hm.

“You heard about Friday nights at Club Neo?” Sarah says, and Rachel takes another quick sip of water before she can snort.

“You met,” Susan says, “at a  _dance club_.”

“Not really a lot of dancin’ there.”

“I think you underestimate yourself,” Rachel says, and with calculated fury she slips her hand into Sarah’s. Sarah’s fingers fold around hers like it’s natural, like she’s never even considered being terrified of it. Rachel stares at their hands for too long before she looks back at her mother. “Is that not a satisfying enough meeting for you? Shall we redo it until it meets your approval?”

Susan lets out a small, breathy laugh and drinks long from her glass of white wine. “Fantastic,” she says. “Truly remarkable. How proud I am to be your mother, Rachel.”

Rachel feels her fingers spasm against Sarah’s. The waitress puts down the food in front of them and Rachel can feel it building in her, that monstrous thing that only her mother recognizes, the one that will send her spiraling and snarling and snapping towards Susan’s throat. She hates it. She wants to sweep all the plates off of the table and grab Susan by her collar and  _scream_  in her face until she shatters. Which one of them? Either of them. Until both of them shatter, and Rachel can be done with all of this.

She’ll never be done. She’ll keep crawling back, just in case Susan says those words again someday and means them.

Sarah’s hand is tight around Rachel’s own. Oh. Rachel hadn’t noticed.

Across the table Susan begins savagely cutting into her fish; her words are still hanging there between the three of them, sour and mocking. Rachel yanks her hand out of Sarah’s and picks up her knife and fork. The three of them eat in silence; the words shrivel up the air until it’s unbreathable.

“Why won’t you be kind,” Rachel says. “One time. Only once. Why–” but she can’t say anymore. She stabs her food and bites it off her fork and chews it and it tastes like nothing.

“I always expect the best from you, Rachel,” Susan says. “This isn’t it.”

“Best for her?” Sarah says. “Or best for you.” Rachel doesn’t look at Sarah, doesn’t look at anything – her salad is blurring slightly in front of her eyes, and Rachel is trying to keep it from blurring completely. If she cries, here, now, she is lost.

“Hey,” Sarah says. “Answer the question.”

“The best for her,” Susan says. “I’m her mother. Of course I–”

“Maybe this  _is_  the best for her,” Sarah says. “D’you even care if your daughter’s happy? Or can she not be happy unless it’s the way you want? Eh? Do you even know?”

Rachel focuses on a leaf of lettuce until her eyes hurt – she blinks – her vision clears. Good. She looks up to see Susan and Sarah glaring at each other, the guard dogs of two opposing houses.

“It’s only that she doesn’t want to admit it,” Rachel says quietly.

“You think you should be happy?” Sarah says.

Rachel looks at her mother; right into the pale blue of her eyes. “Yes,” she says.

“This make you happy?”

“No,” she says.

“Then leave.”

“Rachel,” says Susan, with that patient exhaustion she has forced into the word for the last fifteen years.

Before she can say anything else, Sarah tilts Rachel’s heads towards hers and kisses her.

It’s the sort of kiss that melts you. Rachel freezes like a deer in the headlights at the shock of it, Sarah’s mouth bloody and kind against hers. Sarah cradles Rachel’s face in her hands and Rachel shudders, shivers, lets her. She reaches out and touches Sarah’s hands with her fingertips, to make sure they’re real. Sarah breaks the kiss and rests her forehead against Rachel’s. “Rachel,” she says, and it’s not a show, and it’s not for Susan, and it’s so quiet and so soft. “Let’s go.”

“Fine,” Rachel says, her voice cracking. Sarah lets her go and Rachel leans back, stands up, plucks her napkin off her lap, and drops it on the chair. “I’m finished,” she tells her mother – sitting there, fragile and alone. “I’ve had enough.”

She turns her back. She leaves. Sarah’s footsteps drop behind her solid and steady, and Rachel feels them like vertebrae – they build her up a whole new spine. They leave the restaurant into the bustle of the city. Sarah skulks behind her, hunched and nervous, as Rachel leads them towards the car.

“Sorry,” Sarah says abruptly, after a minute. “I know that was too far.”

“I didn’t mind,” Rachel says, her voice too thin and too high. She clears her throat in case it’ll help. (It doesn’t.) “I don’t. Mind.”

“Were you serious back there,” Sarah says. “Are you done?”

“I’m tired,” Rachel says, which isn’t an answer. She clicks the button on her car keys and her car chirps, obligingly; she gets into the driver’s seat, feels Sarah taking the passenger’s seat.

“Yes,” Rachel says, turning to look at Sarah – just drinking her in, she can admit that to herself, she’s drinking Sarah in. Her lips are still a little wet. 

“I’m done,” Rachel says.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Good, that’s – that’s good. Good for you. Now you can date anyone you want.”

Oh. “Yes,” Rachel says, and looks away from Sarah to start the car. The motor purrs to life and she realizes, abruptly, that she doesn’t know where she’s dropping Sarah off. Sarah doesn’t seem to know either; she startles and says, rapidly: “I want the whiskey, at least.”

“Of course,” Rachel says. “Yes.” She pulls them into traffic. Sarah sits in the passenger’s seat, staring desperately out the window, radiating awkwardness so much that it feels like a physical weight.

“Please don’t concern yourself with the kiss,” Rachel says. “I told you I don’t mind it. You’re very – proficient.”

Proficient. 

_Proficient?!_

“Thanks,” Sarah says. “Uh. You – you too. Proficient, I mean.”

“It’s kind of you to lie,” Rachel says. “I haven’t had much practice since boarding school.”

“I’m not lying,” Sarah says. Her leg is beginning to hop out of the corner of Rachel’s eye. “I – uuuh. Are you gonna kick me out of the car if I say I liked it. You can, that’s fine, it’s – wow, holy shit, shouldn’t have said that, ha. Ha. Sorry.” She buries her face in her hands.

“I liked it too,” Rachel says, before any of her filters or reflexes can tell her not to. She pulls into the parking spot outside of her building and turns off the car. Clears her throat. “So. You’ll take your tithe in whiskey and then I imagine you’ll–”

The slither of Sarah’s seatbelt unbuckling is the only warning Rachel has before Sarah leans across the space between them and kisses Rachel. Again. This time Rachel knows better, and she tangles her hands in Sarah’s mane and kisses her back. Sarah groans into her mouth and nips at Rachel’s lip and Rachel makes a small sound and Sarah groans again and her hand is on Rachel’s arm, fingertips stroking the fabric of her sleeve–

Rachel leans back. “Oh,” she says, and feels blotches of color on her cheeks. Like she’s  _twelve years old_. 

“Uh,” Sarah says.

“Would you like to come upstairs,” Rachel says slowly. “For your whiskey.”

“For my whiskey,” Sarah says. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d – really like that.”

Rachel unbuckles her seatbelt. She wipes the pad of her thumb across Sarah’s lower lip, smearing the remains of Rachel’s lipstick. “Good,” she says quietly. She unbuckles her seatbelt. She gets out of the car. Once her back is turned to the car, she lets herself smile.


	15. Homestuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was written on 4/13 because I'm _that_ person.

Sarah looks about the way Rachel expected her to. She’s got her shoulders set wary; she’s rocked onto her back foot, like she’s already planning a tactical retreat. Horns tilted forwards, slightly – a lowblood’s horns, short and wickedly curved. (Rachel can feel her own horns standing high above her head and wants to grin at it, doesn’t.) Symbol in grey on her shirt, what was Rachel expecting. Not her blood color. That would be too obvious.

Lowblood, then? Sarah has a lowblood’s posture. Lowblood’s stature. Lowblood’s horns. She might be as low down as brown. Rachel could hope for green, but she admits it – the thought of brown sends something furious trilling through her. She hopes Sarah is low. Oh. She really does: she hopes Sarah’s blood is dirt-colored, and when Rachel sends it pouring out of her no one will be able to tell the ground is wet.

“Good,” she says, crossing the bare dark ground of her land to where Sarah is standing. “You made it.”

She knows Sarah is studying her too: the tall thin spires of Rachel’s horns, the fins flaring at the curve of her jaw, her aristocratic posture. Her symbol in true deep purple on her dress.

Sarah draws her strife specibus – pistol – and points it at Rachel. “Don’t come closer,” she says.

Rachel stops, amused. “You’ve come all this way to yell at me from a distance?”

“Don’t want you drawing blood.”

“Then why come,” Rachel says. She risks a step closer – the pistol wavers, but doesn’t shoot. Good. 

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Even better.

“All this time,” Rachel says, (another step closer) “picking away at me over Trollian, all of your grey little messages – what did you want from it, Sarah? Really. You wanted me to know. You wanted me to  _hate_  you for it.”

The pistol jumps. Sarah’s throat ticks with a swallow; she stumbles a few steps back, cocks the gun. “Don’t,” she says. “Piss off, you don’t know anything.”

“Don’t I?” Rachel says, and draws her spear, and leaps.

The pistol goes off but Rachel’s already moving – it grazes her leg, draws seadwelling purple blood from the velvet grey of her skin and sends her snarling. She separates the spear into its two swords and whirls towards Sarah. Is she trying to kill Sarah? She doesn’t know. Something black and true and vicious is flooding her veins and she wants to hurt Sarah more than she’s ever wanted anything.

“Back off!” Sarah roars. She fires again, but she’s ducking out of the way of a sword and the shot goes wild. She fires again. “I don’t want to  _kill_  you, Rachel, come on–”

“ _Then what do you want._ ”

“Back off!” Sarah yells again. She’s moving backwards, now, stumbling turning into something like grace. She isn’t as fast as Rachel, or as strong – not a seadweller, then, land-based and terrible. Terrible. Rachel wants her, terrible. She flips the swords around in her hands, prowls closer.

Sarah pulls the pistol in both hands and aims it at Rachel’s head. Her hands are spasming and her eyes are wide and dark. She plants her feet: steady. Damn. Rachel stops, rests the points of the swords on the ground. They’re both breathing heavily; Rachel wants to fight Sarah so badly she thinks she might die of it.

“What do you want,” she says. Her voice is a rasp, and she can feel the sharp points of each and every one of her teeth.

“I want to kick the  _shit_  out of you,” Sarah says, voice wavering. “You bitch. Always coming after me like your blood meant you were better – like that was the only thing that made someone special – I want to rip you to  _ribbons_ , all that stupid purple blood–”

She stops, because Rachel is growling. It’s a low sound. It goes on and on and it shakes Rachel’s bones, rumbling up through her entirety.

Rachel takes a step. The pistol doesn’t waver. “But,” Sarah says. “I know you’re – you’re gonna lose your mind when you see it. My – my blood. You’re gonna flip. So. Don’t move.”

Rachel should stop growling – Rachel can’t stop growling – Rachel keeps growling. Sarah is starting to let out these almost-unnoticeable rumbling responses, in panicked little bursts. If Rachel doesn’t sink her teeth into Sarah’s neck she will lose her mind, she’ll lose her mind, she will. She doesn’t remember what Sarah was saying. Is this how lowbloods feel all the time? Like animals?

“Say you won’t kill me,” Sarah says. “Even if I’m – red, or – or fuschia, or some color that isn’t even on the spectrum. Say you won’t ‘n I’ll put it down.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Rachel says. Or. She tries to say it, but it comes out jagged and rough – like an rockslide trying to speak, all consonants and rumble.

“Don’t believe you.”

“If I killed you,” Rachel says, “you would stop.”

Sarah’s tongue darts out to her lips. “Drop the swords,” she says.

Rachel sends them back to her specibus and raises her hands. Empty. She watches Sarah; she watches Sarah send her pistol away in a flash of light and then Rachel is leaping forward again and Sarah is colliding with her halfway and Sarah’s mouth is against her mouth and it’s all teeth. It’s all teeth. Rachel doesn’t even understand the noise she’s making – she’s never had a kismesis before, embarrassingly, there’s never been anyone she’s hated even one small bit of how she hates Sarah. Her teeth rip Sarah’s lips to shreds. There is blood in Rachel’s mouth, and for a moment it doesn’t even matter. The blood. It doesn’t matter.

She shoves her hands under Sarah’s leather jacket, her shirt, she digs her claws into the thick skin of Sarah’s back and Sarah snarls. They’re spinning around, back and forth, neither of them willing to be the one that falls down first. It’s just the dark and Sarah. Sarah’s teeth and Sarah’s lips and Sarah’s tongue and Sarah’s claw tips stroking at the very edge of Rachel’s fins.

Rachel trills. “Shit,” Sarah hisses, the word bubbly with blood. “ _Rachel_ ,” and she clenches her fingers. Rachel’s fins are sharp with pain – terrible – awful – she can’t stop making sounds. What sounds? Who knows. She wants Sarah on the ground. She wants to be over Sarah on the ground and she wants Sarah to know that there is nothing she can ever do to beat Rachel; Rachel will always win, Rachel will always be better. If she could just have that she could be satisfied. She wouldn’t need anything else.

What happens instead: Sarah sweeps Rachel’s legs out from under her and knocks her to the ground. She pins Rachel down. Rachel’s eyes flutter open.

Everything is purple, which is understandable – what isn’t understandable is the red. Unreal red. Candy red. Lipstick red. Sarah is breathing heavily and her candy lipstick is dripping from a split in her lip and Rachel can’t stop thinking: where’s her blood? Where is her blood? The color she’s bleeding isn’t real, where–

“No,” she says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. She’s panting, still, that – blood – that blood – her blood – her blood dripping from her lip and Rachel’s blood smearing the line of her neck. She’s a mess. Rachel still wants her. Rachel wishes she didn’t, because the parts of her body that aren’t straining towards Sarah are straining away as fast as they possibly can.

“Mutant,” Rachel rasps. “Freak.”

“Don’t you dare,” Sarah says. A flash of anger shocks her face and then is gone and Rachel wants it, Rachel wants it, Rachel – needs to pay attention. 

“That’s why you were terrified,” Rachel says. “Because your blood is an aberration. You should be dead. Someone should have killed you. Someone should have noticed your disgusting mutant blood and–”

Sarah punches Rachel in the face. It’s a solid punch, a bright sharp star of a hit; Rachel’s head ricochets, and she clings to consciousness with her claws. The second her head clears enough she lifts it and snarls at Sarah with every single one of her teeth. Sarah startles, doesn’t move. Instead she hisses back, a sound that makes Rachel’s fins flare.

“I’ll kill you,” Rachel says. “I’ll kill you, let me up, you utter mistake–”

“ _No_ ,” Sarah says. “You’re not gonna kill me. I won’t let you. I’ll fight you and I’ll  _win_ , Rachel. You hear me? I’ll win.”

Rachel starts growling again, if she ever stopped.

Sarah shifts her weight; Rachel can feel the supernova-hot weight of Sarah’s hips against her hips, pinning down her bones. Blood drips onto Rachel’s face, but blood is already smeared around her lips so does it matter? Does it matter? Does it – does it matter?

“You hate that, don’t you,” Sarah says. “That I’m gonna win. I can knock you down over and over and over again and you’ll only get up ‘cause I’ll  _let_  you. Doesn’t that make you feel like shit.”

Rachel lunges up towards Sarah’s face but can’t quite manage it; her teeth snap shut an inch away from Sarah’s nose and she falls down again. Her brain is a black stormcloud. Sarah’s throat, and Sarah’s throat, and Sarah.

“Doesn’t that make you feel like shit,” Sarah says, quieter now, and rolls her hips forward–

And then she lets go.

Rachel has enough time to feel the screaming uncurling warmth of Sarah’s hips against her hips before she realizes the freedom and she’s moving on instinct now her lips are against Sarah’s and she’s rolling them over and she has Sarah on the ground, finally, finally she has Sarah on the ground. She sinks her teeth into Sarah’s neck and Sarah groans. Again, she does it again. Rachel leans back and studies her work – her teeth marked out in Sarah’s unbelievable red blood.

“I win,” she says in a low base rumble of a growl. “ _I_ win. I win.”

Sarah’s pupils are the size of the sun, black, black. Black. Black as hate. Black as every single piece of Rachel, all of them humming the same furious note.

“Prove it,” Sarah rasps, so Rachel leans down and shows her.


	16. Boarding school

Sarah Manning cuts class to sit behind the gymnasium and do nothing in particular. People say she smokes, because smoking isn’t allowed at Saint Kendall’s – that’s what’s exciting about Sarah, that she does all the things that aren’t allowed. She climbs onto roofs. She wears her shirt unbuttoned, her skirt unironed. She laces her feet into combat boots. She kisses girls, sometimes.

But Rachel knows better. Sarah doesn’t smoke. Rachel can tell, because the air just smells like sunbaked asphalt; when Rachel rounds the corner, she just sees Sarah sunbathing like a lizard in the third-period warmth. No cigarette. All the other girls were lying.

“You’re Sarah Manning,” Rachel says.

Sarah opens one lazy eye and looks at her, apparently considers her worthy enough for both eyes to open and blink. She looks vaguely amused. “Yeah,” she says, “and you’re Rachel Duncan. We’ve been sharin’ bloody classes for years. Borrowed a pencil from you once.”

“You never returned it.”

“Shit,” Sarah says, “sorry.” She doesn’t sound especially sorry. She rolls her head back against the wall and closes her eyes again. The sun touches her with too much gentleness; she looks too beautiful. It’s not fair. Sarah Manning is a delinquent and is destined for jail time. The light shouldn’t gild her like that.

“I thought you smoked,” Rachel says, crossing the asphalt to fold herself down awkwardly next to Sarah. Sarah’s legs are stretched out in front of her, feet in those clunky combat boots tapped neat next to each other; Rachel folds her skirt under her, kneels. The asphalt burns the skin of her knees, but it’s fine.

“Who said I smoked,” Sarah says. She still sounds amused.

“Alison Hendrix,” Rachel says, “to Aynsley Norris.”

“Look at that, you know everyone’s names. You eavesdropping, Rachel Duncan?”

“I wanted to know where to find you.”

“And why’s that. You want me to beat someone up for you? I don’t do that shit unless there’s a good reason for it, yeah?”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. She watches her hands obsessively smooth down the edge of her skirt, even though the folds are perfect. Out of the corner of her eye Sarah slowly goes still.

“Rachel,” she says, “did someone do somethin’ to you?”

“No,” Rachel says, “nothing like that.” She swallows. “I want you to know that if you tell anyone about this I will destroy you. I have influence with the dean. I know you’re here on scholarship – it would be easy to have you removed.”

She flicks her eyes up to Sarah. Sarah’s feelings change stormcloud-quick; now she looks furious in a completely different way. Stone cold.

“Thanks for the reminder,” Sarah says. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone ‘bout whatever nasty shit you’re after. You want drugs? I can’t get ‘em for you, but I’m sure I can find you someone to fuck you up. You want alcohol? I don’t have rich girl  _shite_ , but I’ll help you get wasted. Won’t hold your hair back, though. Unless you blackmail me into it.”

“I’ve heard you kiss girls,” Rachel says, very quickly. “On occasion. Alison Hendrix says you’ve kissed boys from our sister school – she didn’t say  _kissed_ , persay, but she mentioned it. So. I assume you favor both. Do you?”

Sarah laughs. 

It’s a surprised squawk of a sound; it bursts from her lips and her head thuds back against the wall again. “What the hell,” she gasps. “Who the hell are you, Rachel? Yeah, I kiss girls sometimes. You gonna tell on me or what.”

“I want you to kiss me,” Rachel says. Rachel  _orders_ , that sounds better. She keeps her chin up and she looks studiously at the distant shape of her math classroom. She doesn’t let any part of her body move.

The air is silent; just the distant humming of traffic from miles away from school. Rachel turns and looks at Sarah, who is looking at her. Rachel looks away again. She doesn’t let her eyes get caught on the gape of Sarah’s shirt, the way it bares her collarbones and the thin black edge of her bra.

“Why,” Sarah says.

“Because I’ve told you to.”

Sarah’s fingers land on Rachel’s chin; before Rachel can even process what’s happening Sarah has tilted Rachel’s head to the side with two fingers and pressed her lips gently to Rachel’s. They’re gone. Rachel blinks at Sarah, reaches up and touches her fingers to her lip like an idiot.

“Why,” Sarah says again. She’s smiling just enough to show the sharp point of one tooth.

“No one would believe you,” Rachel says, hastily folding her hands back together.

“Oh,” Sarah says. After a second: “shit.”

“Is that it?” Rachel says. “Are you – is our business concluded?”

Sarah raises her eyebrows. “That wasn’t a kiss, babes.”

“Then what would you call it.”

“Do you want me to kiss you or not, Rachel?”

Rachel sighs out through her nose, swallows. After a second Sarah lets out a warm breath and sits up. She folds her legs underneath her and now she is very close and facing Rachel and – oh – this was a mistake. Rachel makes those, sometimes, and this was one, and Sarah has bridged the gap between them and kissed Rachel. Her mouth is warm and wet and very present and so is her tongue. Which is in Rachel’s mouth. Ah.

After a dizzy second or two, Rachel realizes she should probably kiss back. She leans forward, cups the edge of Sarah’s jaw with one hand, sucks Sarah’s lower lip between her teeth and melts into this, all of this, the afternoon sun and the burning asphalt against her calves and Sarah’s hand playing with the edge of Rachel’s skirt and the warm dizzy feeling that permeates all of it. She hears herself make a small shivering sound against Sarah’s mouth, like: oh. She hears herself make a sound like  _oh_. Sarah doesn’t stop kissing her for it; she just smiles, the edge of her lips against Rachel’s lips, and keeps kissing her with a gentle patience. Rachel feels herself start to fall apart.

Sarah’s hands are on Rachel’s thighs. Rachel can feel the fast beat-beating of Sarah’s pulse under her thumb; she could let Sarah’s hands move higher, feel the pulse in Sarah’s throat beat itself into dizzy oblivion. It would feel good, it would all feel good.

Instead she reaches down and puts her hands on Sarah’s wrists. She breaks the kiss. She can hear herself panting, like an embarrassing animal. “Yes,” she says, and then clears her throat, and then says “yes” again. Doesn’t matter that she cleared her throat: her voice is still limp and trembling.

“You good?” Sarah says. Her voice is a little rough. One of her thumbs is making slow circles on Rachel’s bare thigh, under the fabric of her skirt, and Rachel wishes Sarah would stop that because she can’t think through the small electric pulse of that touch.

“I’m not going to have sex with you behind the gymnasium,” Rachel says. She should probably sound less like she’s trying to convince herself.

“Good call,” Sarah says. “Smart.” Her hands aren’t moving.

Rachel closes her eyes. “I don’t think I like boys at all,” she tells the heat of Sarah’s hands.

“That’s smart too,” Sarah says. “They’re wankers, mostly.”

Rachel opens her eyes. “So are you.”

Sarah grins, a sharp slant of teeth. Her eyes crinkle up when she smiles and it’s distracting and Rachel is absolutely going to lean in and kiss her again so instead she pushes at Sarah’s hands and leans back away from Sarah. She sits on her rear. This is going to ruin her skirt, but she’ll deal with that later.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

“Mm.”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone. Might be a wanker but I’m not that sort of wanker, yeah?”

“You’re kinder than you should be,” Rachel says. “You should be cruel.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s what people say?”

“It is.”

“Rachel,” Sarah says, “you should hear the shit they say about you.”

Rachel lets out a trembling exhalation, leans forward, crushes her mouth against Sarah’s again. She shouldn’t; she does. She slides the tips of her fingers up Sarah’s skirt, the warm stubbly skin of Sarah’s thighs. She drowns in the dizzy sunlight feeling of it – of Sarah’s mouth opening against hers, Sarah’s hands stroking down the curve of Rachel’s ribs. Rachel keeps her fingertips where they are. She doesn’t move any closer or any further away from what she wants.

She stops kissing Sarah, bumps their foreheads together. “Don’t tease,” Sarah says in a hot desperate breath.

Rachel wants to tease. Rachel didn’t even know she could tease and now she wants to, just because it makes her feel good.

“Do you have any other hiding spots on this campus,” she says, “besides the gymnasium.”

“You’d be surprised,” Sarah says. She leans forward and catches Rachel’s lip between her teeth; Rachel can’t help herself, she whines.

“Show me,” she says, when Sarah lets her go. She opens her eyes and Sarah’s eyes are open, and there, and beautiful. She hadn’t realized that Sarah had beautiful eyes. Sarah does. They’re brown and green and gold and they go on forever.

“You want me to show you?” Sarah says, slow. Her eyes watch Rachel’s eyes.

And Rachel says: “Yes.”


	17. Sarah's in a band

Rachel had tried to dress down for this, but the more she looks around the bar the more she thinks that she did a bad job of it. The sweater she’s wearing looks more expensive than most people’s outfits; she shouldn’t have gone with boots, terrible plan, this was all a terrible plan, she should really go back to her apartment. Put on a concerto. Throw the flyer for Punk Rock Ho into her recycling bin, face-down.

Instead she orders another glass of wine and hunches down over the bar, tries to ignore the furtive guilty pleasure of it: coming here, to this bar, to this – “concert” – is the first thing she’s done wrong since she was six years old. Rachel has done everything right, except for ripping down that flyer off of a telephone pole because the woman’s face on it was a casual, disdainful snarl. This is wrong. This was the wrong thing to do. But at least it’s doing  _something._

They’re supposed to start at 8pm. At around 8:07 a man lugs a drumset onstage, starts moodily thrashing everything into place. The denizens of the bar are either too drunk or too pinned down by their own ennui to pay any attention to him. Rachel does – she notices that he looks like a wreck, and then she stops paying attention. She watches a woman come from backstage and plug in a bass. Feedback wail. “ _Shit_ , Elle,” snaps the man. “You wanna be careful?”

“Shut up, Tito.”

Neither of them are the woman Rachel saw on the flyer, which means she was probably a stock image. Or a stolen photograph. Both Elle and Tito seem the type of person to steal someone else’s image and use it as a front for their mediocre band. Rachel swallows more of the wine – it’s weak, and it tastes like vinegar – and tries to decide whether or not to leave now. Judging from the sour growling of the bass, whatever music Elle and Tito are about to make isn’t going to be very good at all. Rachel’s already wasted enough time, she could–

There she is.

The woman onstage has eyeliner smeared around her eyes and a tangled brown wave of hair that settles like a wary animal around her shoulders. Leather jacket, threadbare grey tank top that bares skin and bares something black and strappy that could charitably be called a bra. Black jeans, painted on. Combat boots. An air of annoyance that lingers around her like static. She’s lugging a guitar and the second she gets onstage she starts bickering with Elle and Tito – oh, she’s  _British_  – and strumming a few preparatory chords. No one in this bar is looking at her. Rachel doesn’t know how they’re not looking at her.

She’s strumming out a low rolling series of notes, and then she looks up and meets Rachel’s eyes. Rachel holds her eyes very wide to keep from blinking, raises her wine glass to her mouth and takes another intolerable sip. The two of them watch each other. The woman onstage twitches her chin up in something like a nod. Rachel gives her something like a nod in return. She goes back to the guitar.

At 8:30 or so, the lights flash on hot and flickering onstage. A microphone squeals from its stand. The frontwoman grabs the mike and says, voice a thunderstorm of British vowels: “Hey. I’m Sarah. We’re Punk Rock Ho. Cheers.”

Then she plays.

Rachel was right, they’re terrible. Tito plays drums with, impossibly, too much and too little energy; it’s a discordant pounding sound that doesn’t match a rhythm or provide any energy whatsoever. Elle is slightly better on the bass, trying to make something like a heartbeat. She’s mediocre at best. Sarah has some sort of talent and some sort of energy on the guitar – but she couldn’t make up for the rest of her band even if she was remarkable, and she isn’t remarkable.

Rachel notices all of these things in an instant and then forgets them, because Sarah is singing.

The microphone quality is abhorrent and Sarah’s mouth is pressed too close to it but she’s singing like an excavation of her own feeling, like she’s got an axe and a shovel and she’s ripping all the dirt up. Every note echoes. She sounds like a train going somewhere distantly familiar and completely unknown. She sounds the way Elle’s bass should sound. She is – in a work – unbelievable. She sings about loneliness. Rachel understands it.

Partway through, Sarah looks up from her microphone and looks at Rachel. She’s murmuring some low song into the mic about the streets of London, and she’s looking at Rachel. Rachel recrosses her legs on her barstool, one over the other. She watches Sarah’s eyes flick to her legs and back to Rachel’s eyes; suddenly Rachel doesn’t regret the boots. Suddenly Rachel doesn’t regret coming here. She feels a smile curling up the edge of her mouth, completely unfamiliar.

They play for a long time. (Too long.) (They really aren’t good.) After a few songs, Sarah stops pretending she isn’t staring at Rachel.

The last song is a frantic thrash of panic, anger bubbling up through Sarah’s voice and raising heads around the bar to look at her. (They shouldn’t.) (She’s Rachel’s.) (Rachel pretends she didn’t think that.) Sarah’s hands are throttling the neck of the microphone, and she’s growling up this wild keen of fear, and Rachel is on the very edge of her bar stool. Watching. She can’t stop herself.

A few wild bangs of the drum from Tito, and the song stops. It’s like walking off a cliff. The three of them breathe heavily onstage; besides that, the air is completely silent. Sarah leans back towards the microphone. “Thanks,” she says, and walks offstage. The lights stop. Conversation at the bar starts up again, muttering and low.

Now what. Rachel can’t stop blinking at the stage, watching Elle drain a bottle of water and begin the slow, lackadaisical process of unplugging her bass. Tito wanders off to the other side of backstage. They’re done? That’s it. Rachel’s heart, still echoing with the feelings of a few minutes ago, feels vaguely cheated.

Then Sarah comes back – drops herself on the edge of the stage, starts picking at her guitar again. Her fingers are restless; one boot kicks at the boards of the stage. She’s still reverberating with the sound. Rachel makes her second mistake: she stands up from the bar, abandons her mostly-empty glass, and crosses the room to Sarah.

“Your band is terrible,” she says, when she gets close enough. (She’s close enough to see the sweat on Sarah’s neck and face and arms.)

“You can piss off,” Sarah says amiably. She looks up from the guitar, quickly – a flash of scavenger eyes – and then looks back down. “Oh, it’s you. You seemed pretty into it.”

“Your band is terrible,” Rachel says again. “You aren’t.”

Sarah snorts. A smile tucks up the corner of her mouth. “You goin’ after my mates?”

“Yes.”

Sarah behind her to the stage. Elle and Tito have both vanished. “Well, you’re right,” Sarah says, turning back around. She leans her hands on the stage behind her, rests her weight on them. “They’re shit.”

“And yet?”

Sarah shrugs a shoulder. “They share,” she says. Cocks a smirk at Rachel like a loaded gun. “They’re nice about it. Sharing.”

Oh.

“It must be something,” Rachel says, “to let you put up with that level of incompetence.”

“It’s alright,” Sarah says. She’s looking at Rachel with the hot intensity of a spotlight. “Think I might want to try somethin’ else, though.” She tilts her head a little bit. “Tito’s drums give me a headache.”

“I can’t help you there,” Rachel says. “I’m not very good at sharing at all.”

Sarah pulls the guitar strap off from around her neck, rests the instrument down gently on the stage. She leans forward, folds her hands together between her knees. “You should let me buy you a drink.”

“Won’t your bandmates be missing you?”

“They’re doin’ lines backstage. They do that every show. Then they’re gonna make out. They might miss me then, but probably they’ll be too shitfaced to notice I’m gone.”

“I already have a glass of wine,” Rachel says.

Sarah snorts. “I’m not buyin’ you a drink here, this place is bloody terrible.”

Rachel makes her third mistake. It’s this: “Show me something better, then.”

Sarah smiles, a slow spark across her face. “What’s your name?” she says.

“Rachel.”

“I’m Sarah,” says Sarah. She holds out a hand and Rachel shakes it. It’s very warm. Sarah doesn’t let go of Rachel’s hand, just stands up and grabs her guitar with her other hand. “Come on,” she says.

Rachel looks behind her. No one is paying any attention; a man has passed out on a table. She climbs up onto the stage and lets Sarah pull her into the dark. Backstage everything is black and echoes; from somewhere distant Rachel can hear Elle, a constant breathy sound. She knows Sarah can hear it too from the way her hand clenches, once, in Rachel’s. “Let me just,” she says, and leads them into a tiny, dingy little room. A guitar case is open on a table. Sarah lowers the guitar into it, tender and careful, and latches it up.

When she turns around, Rachel kisses her.

She hadn’t meant to do it. It’s just that the noise of Elle outside, soft gasps edging into moans, is making her warm and frantic. She can’t stop thinking about that last song: the rough escalation of Sarah’s voice into a feeling Rachel could never put into words. She cups Sarah’s face with one hand and feels the skin of her face, her chin. She leans back.

“I was gonna buy you a drink first,” Sarah says, rough.

“You can buy me one later,” Rachel says. She leans in again. Sarah’s hands wrap around Rachel’s hips and pull her closer, so Rachel’s body is pressed entirely against Sarah’s. She trails her hands along the instrument of Sarah’s throat. She grabs Sarah’s arms, tugs Sarah’s lower lip between her teeth and bites down.

“ _Oh_  fuck,” Sarah says. She strokes her hands up the line of Rachel’s sweater. “Mm,” she hums. “You’re so good, you’re so – god.”

Rachel has Sarah’s back up against a wall. Rachel has Sarah’s mouth against her mouth. Rachel has Sarah. She can make Sarah fall apart.

“What was the last song called,” she breathes against Sarah’s mouth.

“Orphan,” Sarah says, voice cracked and pained. “‘t’s called Orphan.”

“Good,” Rachel says, and kisses her again.


	18. Gallery

“Are you interested in purchasing the piece?” Rachel says, and the woman in the leather jacket jumps almost an inch in the air. She pulls her hood off her head and spins on her foot and generally wobbles about until she settles: right in front of  _Train_. 

“Uh,” she says, intelligently. “Just – just looking.”

“You were just looking two days ago. And three days before that. Our gallery is fairly popular, but you couldn’t have thought you were unrecognizable.”

The expression on the woman’s face makes it very apparent that she did, in fact, think she was some sort of master of deception.

“I’m going to have security escort you out,” Rachel says, turning on her heel and making for the–

“Wait,” says the woman behind her. “Wait. Do you know the artist? Is it – shite, this is weird – is it about death?”

_Train_  is a canvas that features a large white circle with a soft, off-white halo. Plain black background. Modern, as is Childs’ usual. Her work is fairly abstract – it is also usually about death. Most visitors to the gallery assume otherwise; this is why Childs’ paintings sell.

Rachel turns slowly on one heel. “Yes,” she says. “It’s about death. Or at least that was my thought.”

Her only response is “oh,” and the stranger’s face turning back to the light of the oncoming train. Her eyes dissect it and she turns back to Rachel. “She the same one who did the one with the bridge? Over – over there?”

_Choice_ is a plain horizontal black line that spans a blank canvas, one side to the other. It is also about death, or so Rachel believes. She hasn’t asked.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Elizabeth Childs.”

“She’s really good.”

_Yes_ , Rachel wants to say,  _that’s why she’s in this gallery_. Instead she pulls a fake smile onto her face and says: “Were you planning on purchasing any of her works?”

Slumped shoulders. “Ah,” says the woman, “no, I – no. I don’t have money. Like, really don’t have money.” She mutters, fast and ashamed: “And museums charge, yeah?”

Rachel closes her eyes for a second, sucks in a breath through her nose, opens her eyes again to study the drowned-cat picture of the woman in front of her. “We aren’t a charity. Our goal isn’t educating the masses about art. I am sorry, but this is a commercial space. You can’t–”

“Doesn’t it look better for you, though? If more people are here?”

Rachel raises her eyebrows, hopes it conveys  _not when they look like you do_.

“Look,” says the stranger, hands in her pockets and fiddling with something Rachel can’t see. “I’m Sarah, I’m not – I’m not here to rob your shit, I promise. I just want to look.”

Rachel looks at  _Train_. Rachel looks at Sarah. Rachel looks at the pristine white walls of her gallery, her heart, the only thing she’s ever cared about.

“At least dress for it,” she says without looking at Sarah. She purposefully strides off towards another part of the gallery, even though she isn’t going anywhere.

* * *

The next time Sarah comes back, she’s wearing a dress and heels. Her hair is straightened. She’s wearing lip gloss; it’s distracting. Rachel is always busy with the gallery, and she hasn’t had time to – not recently – anyways, Sarah’s mouth. Anyways, Sarah. The gallery is empty besides Sarah, so there isn’t much else to think about. It’s 2pm on a Tuesday and outside the world is beautiful; inside the world is exactly the way Rachel has cultivated it, a mirror-maze of other people’s terrors. 

This time Sarah has moved to the other side of the gallery, standing in front of  _сім'я._  Frantic scrawls of primary colors, the desperation driving it to something older than childhood and more full of grief. Sometimes Rachel compares Kedzierski’s work to Twombly’s, when she is trying to sell a piece. Sometimes she doesn’t want to sell any of the pieces.

“I appreciate the effort,” Rachel says, crossing through the empty gallery to Sarah.

Sarah jumps again. Her heels rock and click on the floor. “Thanks,” she says. “Uh. For letting me back in. Even though I’m not gonna buy anythin’.” She runs a hand through her hair, seems surprised at its sleekness.

“Well,” Rachel says. She folds her arms over her ribcage and studies the canvas. “What do you think of it?”

“It should be happy,” Sarah says. “The bloody colors, it’s all Crayola shite, but it’s not happy. Something’s missing. Dunno what, yeah? I keep lookin’ at it but I don’t know.”

“Understanding,” Rachel says quietly.

“What?”

“You seek understanding from the artist. The artist seeks understanding from you. Neither of you reach each other. The name of the piece is  _family_  in Ukrainian – an incomprehensible family, a family separated from its audience by language. Barriers. Walls. Gaps. Separation.”

Silence. When Rachel looks at Sarah she finds Sarah staring at her, mouth slightly open. The gloss has been nibbled off around the edges. Rachel looks away again.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “You went to school for this, didn’t you.”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Sarah says again. “Ha. You must think I’m a right idiot.”

“No,” Rachel says, “you’ve shown more understanding than most do. Even the people who buy these pieces don’t necessarily see them. Kedzierski’s work especially. It’s easy to be lost in it and ignore anything…unpalatable.”

“Don’t sell it, then,” Sarah says, like it’s obvious. 

Rachel feels a smile curling up the corner of her lip. “That’s why the pieces are here. To be sold. To be treasured, even if it’s not for their authentic meaning. They mean  _something_  to whoever bought them. They always do.” Even if it’s status. Even if it’s a backdrop for a doctor’s office. Rachel sells them anyways. 

“Do you–” Sarah starts, and then the door to the gallery opens. A man in a suit, hands in his pockets, eyes prowling over the canvases. Here to buy. Private collection, looking to impress – wife? mistress? acquaintances? He’ll want Childs, regardless. The emptiness will suit him.

“Excuse me,” Rachel murmurs out of habit, and leaves.

* * *

The next time she sees Sarah, the gallery is full – outside the rain is coming down, and people have come in to gawk. A room full of Sarahs, mostly useless. Rachel talks up some of the cheaper pieces, convinces a few climbers that the art will help separate them from the rest of their desperate pack. She mentions that Bowles is young but already showing promise; she stresses the unique and utterly unmatched style of Kedzierski’s chaos. She coaxes. She works to convince.

Across the gallery, Sarah watches her. She looks at the art sometimes. She looks at Rachel again.

* * *

“Hey,” she says, four days later.

“Welcome back.”

_Train_  sold, and  _Bottle,_  and Childs has delivered two more canvases to fill the gap – the last of this series, she’d promised with dark circles under her eyes. She’d said she was taking a break for a while. Rachel hasn’t inquired what about. Secretly she’s glad of it.

When the canvases came, she thought about Sarah. Which is ridiculous – but it’s true.

“Thanks,” Sarah says quietly. In a dress she doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands; she keeps fiddling with the strap of her purse. The entire outfit looks awkward on her. Rachel, with an eye trained for aesthetics, almost can’t bear it. She watches Sarah roam the halls of the gallery. 

“This is new,” Sarah says, and Rachel follows her over. “Where’s the other one?”

“Sold.”

Sarah turns her head to look at Rachel. “Did they get it?”

Not especially.

“It’s off to a private collection,” Rachel says. “It will be treated with the utmost care. What do you think of the new piece?” Stupid. Desperate. Even Sarah can probably hear the way Rachel moved for that question as quickly as possible.

Sarah bites her lip, then seems to realize her mistake and lets go of it. (The lip gloss shreds, slightly.) “Uh,” she says, and laughs self-consciously. Goes to run her hand through her hair. “I dunno. What do you think?”

“Tell me your opinion,” Rachel says. “Call it your price of admission.”

Sarah goes to rock from foot to foot but can’t, because of the heels. “I,” she says. “It’s – it’s about being trapped. I don’t know. You can’t escape, ‘cause you’re moving forward but you don’t even know that there’s nowhere to go. What’s the word–”

“Claustrophobia,” Rachel says quietly.

“Yeah!” Sarah says. “Yeah, yeah, exactly, brilliant, thanks.” She grins. Rachel looks away from it and back to the canvas. The name of the piece is  _Run_. The canvas is white; the only shape is a black oval that stretches almost to the edges. Rachel was reminded of a jogging track. She also thought of entrapment.

“I agree,” she says.

“You don’t have to say that. I know you’re not a charity.”

Rachel exhales through her nose. “I was overly harsh. I apologize.

“And I’m not lying,” she says. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? How small a life can be.”

“Sometimes it’s nice,” Sarah says. “Goin’ around in circles. ‘cause it means you’re coming back.” She clears her throat. “Y’know I don’t even know your name?”

Rachel scans through memories, realizes that Sarah doesn’t. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Rachel Duncan.” She offers a hand. Sarah stares at it for a second like she doesn’t quite know what to do with it, and then shakes. Her handshake is firm. She lets go and reaches for pockets that aren’t there.

“Hey, Rachel,” Sarah says.

“Hello, Sarah.”

“If I could,” Sarah says. “I’d buy ‘em. All of ‘em. It’d be like – keeping ‘em safe. From people who didn’t want them right.”

“I wouldn’t,” Rachel says. “I wouldn’t ever trap them here with me. I’ve realized I have to let them go.”

* * *

“Stop dressing up,” Rachel says, the next time. “I can tell it’s painful for you.”

* * *

Sarah happens to arrive in time to be the first to see Charlotte’s new pieces – Rachel is giddy with them, although she’s trying not to show it. Being able to show off Charlotte’s work is an honor. Rachel is very proud of her.

“Not like everything else, yeah?” Sarah says, prowling through the canvases. “Thought you were more for the abstract shit.”

“These are special.”

Sarah pivots, stares, eyes wild through their comfortable layer of smeared makeup. She’s been able to hear it in Rachel’s voice: the amount of love she can’t stop leaking through. “Husband?” Sarah says.

Rachel blinks, rapidly. “I’m not seeing anyone,” she says, which is the worst possible response. “No. The artist is…” Oh. Sarah isn’t going to buy the art. Telling Sarah changes nothing. How strange. “Something like a daughter, although we aren’t that far apart in age. I wanted to get the chance to present her works to people who might appreciate them.”

“That’s sweet,” Sarah says, a soft smile tucked into the corner of her mouth. She looks back at the canvas and sucks her lip between her teeth. Lets it go. “So she likes…rocks.”

“She is an artist of varied and passionate interests.”

Sarah snorts.

“Rocks are currently one of them.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Whole bloody geology exhibit in here.”

“It’s a metaphor for the ways in which isolation can–”

“Are you bullshitting me?” Sarah says, spinning back to look at Rachel. When she sees Rachel’s face she cackles, full. “You are! You’re bullshittin’. You piece of shit, I hate you.” She’s smiling. She leans over and bumps Rachel’s shoulder with hers, like it’s nothing. (It isn’t nothing.) She tucks her hands back in her pockets and sways, stares at the canvas again.

“People like ‘em,” she says. “Right?”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “They do.”

“Good.” Sarah nods at the canvas, once, and then moves back into the gallery again.

* * *

Some days Sarah doesn’t come. Not that Rachel expects her to. Sometimes it’s just tiring, walking the same shuffle of people past these pieces and repackaging them over and over again. 

A man stands in front of  _Run_. “Wow,” he says. “It’s about running towards something, right? The potential that’s right in front of you. Waiting for you to step into it, like a door.”

“I’ve found that Childs’ work speaks deeply to unexpressed feeling,” Rachel says. She folds her arms across her ribcage and does not watch the door.

* * *

At closing time, before she turns off all the lights, she sometimes wanders the gallery alone. The air is silent and sterile. Rachel stands in front of each piece and lets herself feel it, deeply, painfully, before moving onto the next. Tonight  _скорпіон_  hurts her like a knife dug into a healing wound, and  _Amethyst_ sings of the love you can have for things that excite you. She drifts.

After a while the eddies of feeling fade, and Rachel is alone with herself. She turns off the light, she puts on her coat, she takes her bag. The gallery is hollow and it echoes with her footsteps. She turns on the alarm and locks the door.

Outside, Sarah is standing with her back against a wall and her hands in her pockets. Rachel startles when she sees her, almost drops her keys, manages not to. “If you’d told me you were coming,” she says, “I would have kept the gallery open.” It’s a confession.

“Just got here,” Sarah says. “Train was running late.” She looks at Rachel. “I keep thinking about  _сім'я_. Still hasn’t sold?”

“Correct.”

“Shit.” Sarah moves off the wall and rocks back and forth, looks away from Rachel, looks back. “I actually – ah, this is shit, I’m–” She wipes the back of her hand across her mouth and keeps fidgeting, anxious. “You can ignore this. I’m sorry if I – read this wrong, I –” (she laughs, awkward and self-deprecating) “I didn’t go to school for this shite either. Uh. D’you wanna go out. Sometime.”

“Yes,” Rachel says. Her answer doesn’t surprise her but the immediacy does. In retrospect: of course. Of course the answer would be yes, falling out of her mouth the second Sarah asked for it.

“Wait,” Sarah says. “Really?” Her face colors. Childs would paint this moment as two diagonal lines leaning towards each other; Kedzierski in an enormous rush of pink and red and pale blue. Charlotte would paint Rachel’s hand, where it’s touching itself to Sarah’s cheek. Rachel would paint the exact shade of the streetlight over their heads and she’d be the only one to know what it meant.

She steps in, kisses Sarah. Sarah’s hands settle tentative and gentle on her hips and her mouth opens against Rachel’s. They hold each other there for a moment, and then Rachel rests her forehead against Sarah’s.

“Really,” she whispers.

“Great,” Sarah says, and smiles. “That’s great.”

* * *

Rachel turns off the alarm and it’s just the two of them in the dark of the gallery, holding hands. She’s a little drunk and quite a fair bit exhausted; the sunrise hasn’t started outside, but it probably will have before they leave.

“Bloody terrifying in here,” Sarah says, her voice giddy. Her hand squeezes Rachel’s.

Rachel squeezes Sarah’s hand back, and pulls her deeper in.


	19. Vacation (NSFW)

“Holy shit,” Cosima says, for the ten thousandth time. “This is my dream vacation.”

She’s still staring across the pool, at the woman who is sunbathing there. She’s Cosima’s type: willowy, with long eyelashes that dust over her cheekbones when her eyes are closed. Her legs go on for miles. Sarah gets it, but also if Cosima says anything like  _this is my dream vacation_  one more time Sarah is absolutely pushing her into the pool.

“Go talk to her,” she says, also for the ten thousandth time. She slips her sunglasses back over her eyes and lays down on the chaise lounge.

“Dude,” Cosima says. “No. I think she’s here for the DYAD retreat, have you seen DYAD’s science, I’d totally embarrass myself.”

“Wait” Sarah says, “she’s a scientist? Cos. That’s your bloody dream woman.”

“She’s my  _dream_ woman,” Cosima says, flooding the words with endless desperate longing. Sarah meant it as a joke. Fuck it: she pulls her sunglasses off, stands up, drops them on the chair.

“I’m talking to her if you aren’t,” Sarah says. She jumps into the pool.

Underneath the surface, everything is clear and cold and blue. Sarah floats there for a long time. The vacation was Cosima’s idea, not hers – this is more Cosima’s thing, taking breaks, not pushing yourself until you fall over – but now that she’s here she’s glad of it. This resort is beautiful, the beach is beautiful, the pool is beautiful, the sunlight is beautiful. Cosima’s crush is beautiful, but Cosima has dibs.

When Sarah surfaces, Cosima has managed to cross the pool and is standing over her dream woman with her hands flapping wildly around her face. At this rate she’s going to lose the coverup slung around her waist; she probably should lose it, if Sarah can tell where that other woman’s eyes are going. She can tell. Cosima should lose the coverup, and probably just ditch her bikini altogether. Would save Cosima and that mystery woman some time.

Sarah does a flip and moves off in the other direction. She pulls herself out of the pool, squeezes out the dripping wreck of her hair, grabs her towel and pats herself dry. She looks over her shoulder: Cosima is sitting on that chaise lounge now, and the mystery woman is beaming. Fuck, well, Sarah’s lost her best friend until the end of this vacation. She should probably queue up  _Imagine Me and You_ now, just to prep for Cosima’s inevitable heartbreak when they have to leave.

She shrugs on her tanktop and shorts and goes back inside the resort.

Inside everything is soft and bright and signs for the bloody DYAD retreat are absolutely everywhere. Sarah only knows what Cosima’s said about it: blah blah biotech, blah blah Toronto, blah blah Sarah are you falling asleep. (Usually the answer is yes.) They’re really important, probably, which is why they’re at a resort. Good for them.

She hits up the bar. In the middle of the afternoon, the resort bar is cool and dark and cavernous; it only has one inhabitant, a woman with a blonde bob and an all-black skirt suit ensemble who is chugging a martini like her life depends on it. She empties it. Gestures for another. Gets to work on that one too.

“Shit,” Sarah says, slinging herself down two stools down and watching with morbid fascination. “You know how to have a bloody  _vacation_ , yeah?”

“Don’t speak to me,” says the blonde. She finishes the second martini and bites the olives off the stick like they’ve done her a personal offense. Then she looks at Sarah: a quick glance and one that is absolutely gay if Sarah knows anything. (She does.) (Straight women don’t look at her arm muscles like that.)

“Hey,” she says, because why not. “I’m Sarah.”

“Fascinating,” says the blonde. She drops the bare cocktail sword into the empty glass, addresses the bartender. “DYAD has a tab. Thank you.” She gets off the barstool with surprising grace, considering the double martinis, and leaves.

Oh, fuck her. Sarah hops off the stool and follows; on instinct she snags the cocktail sword before the bartender can take it, shoves the end of it between her teeth. She catches up fast enough to the blonde and loops around to walk backwards in front of her.

“I saw you checkin’ me out,” she says.

“I don’t think homeless people are allowed in the bar. I was willing to ignore that, but now that you’ve continued to pester me I  _will_ call security.”

“Hey!” Sarah says. “That’s great. I can tell ‘em DYAD employees are gettin’ toasted when they’re supposed to be in meetings. Two for one.”

The blonde stops. “What do you want.”

“I’m Sarah,” Sarah says again.

A pained, prolonged eyeroll. “Rachel Duncan. I’m sorry if I was objectifying you. Will you stop being the world’s most infuriating barricade.”

“Didn’t mind,” Sarah says.

Rachel’s eyes drop to Sarah’s chest. Back up. “Didn’t you,” she says, and now her voice is slow.

Sarah steps closer. “No.”

Rachel breathes in deeply through her nose, lets it out. “I’m in Room 313,” she says. When she clocks Sarah’s smile, she adds: “Nine o’clock. Now move, I’ll be late.”

Sarah moves. She watches Rachel walk off. Huh. How about that.

* * *

“–and Delphine grew up in France but she moved here when she was  _fourteen_ , Sarah, she had to come here all alone after her mother died, can you believe that? Her dad shipped her off to boarding school like–”

“Wow,” Sarah says. “That’s bloody insane.” She checks the time on her phone. 8:15. She drinks more bourbon. She taps her foot underneath the table. She thinks about the way Rachel had looked at her the second time, curious and wanting.

* * *

After she and Cosima leave, Sarah says something stupid about wanting to wander around the resort and unceremoniously ditches Cosima. She books it for the elevator.

The resort is only three floors; the top floor has doors spaced farther apart. Bigger rooms. Sarah finds 13, knocks.

“Good,” says Rachel, when she opens the door. “You made it.” She leaves the door open and walks into her apartment. She’s ditched her blazer at some point and partially-unbuttoned her sheer blouse and wow, alright, she’s got curves. Sarah internally congratulates herself and closes the door.

“On the bed,” Rachel says, without turning around. 

“You don’t waste time, do you,” Sarah says. “Gonna buy me a drink first?”

“No.”

Rachel’s shirt slides off her shoulders, and that’s when Sarah realizes that Rachel turned her back to Sarah so she could unbutton her blouse. Her bra is mostly black lace. Sarah sits down on the bed so fast that she bounces a little bit. This bed is much nicer than her bed, really, it’s a lot nicer – her brain sort of frantically spins around that idea for a bit while Rachel straddles Sarah’s lap and tilts her chin up with her fingers.

“You’re going to do what I say,” she says. “Aren’t you.”

Sarah leans down and takes Rachel’s fingers into her mouth.

Rachel smiles at her, pulls her fingers out of Sarah’s mouth, and then leans in.

* * *

The good news is that Cosima and Delphine are in love. This is good news because it leaves Sarah a lot of spare time, and also means that Cosima isn’t paying too much attention to the state of Sarah’s neck. 

Rachel’s a biter.

Rachel’s also sort of insatiable. After the first night she gets Sarah’s phone number and keeps texting her times and, embarrassingly, Sarah always comes. (Also, she always comes.) She gets very used to Rachel’s room and extremely used to the ways Rachel’s shirts unbutton, when and where and how hard to kiss and touch and bite. The days blur into a long stretch of some of the best sex Sarah has ever had. She basically just lounges by the pool and waits for her phone to go off – and god, is it ever worth it.

The mistake she makes is five days later, when she’s lying blissfully on Rachel’s bed and then is stupid enough to ask: “So, uh, how long’s your retreat.”

“I leave tomorrow morning,” Rachel says. Rachel has gotten a silky grey-purple robe from somewhere, and is pulling it around herself while wiping off her mouth with a tissue.

“Seriously?” Sarah says, sitting up. “Were you gonna say anything?”

Rachel blinks at her, like a startled robot.

“This has been…” she starts, and then rolls her mouth around for a second like she’s desperately trying to find the right word. “Enjoyable. Thank you for your time.” She stands up from the bed and finds the trashcan, drops the tissue in. Pours herself something ridiculously expensive-looking from the minibar. Turns around, holding the glass, looking at Sarah expectantly–

And then Sarah can’t help it: she bursts into laughter. “Are you  _kidding_  me?” she says. “Were you gonna leave me a review on Yelp, is that what you’re into? What, did you appreciate my bloody  _promptness_ –”

Oh, Rachel is on Sarah’s lap again. She shoves Sarah onto her back with one hand and then leans closer, settling herself on Sarah’s hips, grabbing Sarah’s wrists and pinning them above her head.

“Shut  _up_ ,” Rachel says, and presses her mouth to Sarah’s mouth. Her mouth still tastes like Sarah; Sarah is just–

* * *

A little while after that, Sarah says: “We could, y’know…keep doing this.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. She’s lying naked on her back, still breathing heavily, face flushed and hair askew. A bite mark is blooming on the bone of her hip; Sarah reaches out and presses a thumb to it, watches it pale and then color with blood again as she takes her hand away.

“Don’t touch me,” Rachel says, without opening her eyes.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “You said something ridiculous, and I ignored it.”

“Why is it ridiculous.”

Rachel sighs. “You’re completely ruining my fond memories of the last few minutes.”

“That’s my point,” Sarah says. “They don’t need to be memories, yeah? DYAD’s in Toronto. I’m in Toronto. Why don’t we just…”

“Are you unemployed?” Rachel says, sounding pained. “Do you not have anything that conflicts in your schedule.”

“Trust me, Rachel. I’d make time.”

Rachel opens her eyes, studies the ceiling. Her brow furrows slightly. She looks at Sarah, blinks. “You aren’t joking.”

“Why the hell would I be joking, I’ve seen what you can do with your–”

“Don’t.” Rachel sits up, mechanically pats her hair back into place. She licks her lips; some of the ragged remains of her lipstick flake off. “I suppose I’m amenable.”

“Ringing bloody endorsement.” 

Rachel looks down at her, narrows her eyes slightly. “I want to fuck you against the window of my apartment so the entire city sees the way I can take you completely apart.”

Sarah swallows. “Oh.”

“Honestly,” Rachel says, still in the same conversational tone, “I can’t think of a single surface of my apartment that I  _wouldn’t_  like to–”

“Alright,” Sarah says, voice strangled. “I get it. Cheers.”  She smears her hands over her face, drops them back onto her belly. “Christ,” she breathes. “You’re really alright with this?”

Rachel doesn’t answer; she stands up, crosses the room to her purse, grabs a business card and writes something on the back. She moves to the crumpled, hasty pile of Sarah’s clothing and slips the card into the pocket of Sarah’s jeans. Comes back. Sits next to Sarah, strokes her hand down the curve of Sarah’s ribcage with something contemplative in her eyes.

“Come on,” she says. “I know you’re capable of more than this. Up you get.”

“Aren’t you leaving tomorrow morning,” Sarah says, hands already moving to cup Rachel’s breasts.

“I’ll hardly be the only exhausted person on the plane,” Rachel says. Sarah sits up, feels Rachel’s hands settle on her hips and dig nails in. “You know,” Rachel says, “I never even used the pool.”

“Shame,” Sarah says, leaning in to breathe it against Rachel’s mouth. She doesn’t mean it. She’s pretty sure Rachel knows.

* * *

“Hey,” Cosima says, playing with Sarah’s hand on the bed between them.  _Imagine Me and You_ is playing from Sarah’s laptop, even though Cosima had practically cried from joy when she’d told Sarah that she and Delphine were going to start dating when they both got back to Toronto.

“Hey,” Sarah says. She looks away from the same riveting plot she’s seen after every one of Cosima’s shitty breakups, looks at Cosima.

“I’m sorry I’ve been, like, avoiding you,” Cosima says. “This was supposed to be our vacation, and I just got totally caught up in my own thing. I’m the worst.”

“You’re not the worst,” Sarah says. “Trust me. I entertained myself.”

“Lots of pool time?”

“Something like that,” Sarah says. She rolls over, feels Rachel’s business card dig into her hip through the pocket of her pants. She smiles.


	20. Zoo

“I don’t even like snakes, Mom,” Kira says. “They’re weird.”

“I know, I hate ‘em too.”

“Then why are we going  _back_.  _Again_.”

“‘cause we gotta face our fears, monkey.”

“That’s a stupid reason to do anything.”

It is also a total, complete lie.

Not the hating snakes part. That’s true. Sarah hated snakes the last time they were here, and the time before that – but the problem is Mouse the kingsnake and his handler, who are parked by the door of the reptile house next to some informative and pleading signs about how cool snakes are. Mostly the problem is Mouse’s handler. Sarah would swear on the Bible that she was flirting with Sarah the last time they were there – before the stupid nuclear family came crashing in with children screaming about snakes.

This time, the exhibit is blissfully empty. Mouse’s handler – god, Sarah should really call her Rachel, it’s on her nametag – is sitting next to the tank, idly folding up the sleeves of her sand-colored uniform, blonde hair falling lightly around her face. She is insanely hot. As always.

Mouse, curled up in a loose pile in his tank, is not insanely hot. He’s just terrifying. But it’s fine.

“Hey,” Sarah says, when they get close enough.

Rachel looks up. “Hello again,” she says, sounding surprised and sort of amused. “Attempting exposure therapy, are we?”

“Mom says we have to face our fears,” Kira says, staring at Mouse with a face of clear terror and disgust. Mouse looks back. He flicks his tongue out a bit. Kira looks at Sarah pleadingly and Sarah gives her nothing.

“He really isn’t anything to be frightened of,” Rachel says. She reaches a hand down into the tank and Mouse makes for her wrist, twining around her arm like a piece of jewelry. Rachel lifts him out of the tank with a pleased expression. “He’s very sweet. Would you like to hold him again?”

Kira shakes her head and steps behind Sarah. Sarah looks down at her and then makes a decision. “Sure,” she says, and holds out her arm.

“Very brave,” Rachel says. She is absolutely teasing, and still hot, and Sarah remembers these things as Rachel presses her wrist against Sarah’s and Mouse flows onto Sarah’s arm. Rachel touches her fingertips to Sarah’s wrist; when Sarah looks at her, she’s smiling before she shifts the gaze to Kira.

“Do you remember what I told you last time?” she says.

“Red next to black, friend of Jack,” Kira mutters, watching Mouse’s head weave around a little bit. He really isn’t that bad: dry and smooth and a little bit cool. He stares at Sarah with bright eyes and starts winding his way towards her bicep.

“Hey,” Sarah says, “uh, hey, hey, Rachel? Really not alright with this.”

Rachel exhales a puff of warm air through her nose, stands up and grabs Mouse in gentle hands. “Mouse is a  _kingsnake,_ ” she says, in the patient tone of someone who has to explain this fifty times a day. “He isn’t venomous, and he won’t go for prey as large as a person – especially not now, since he’s been fed recently.”

“Did you feed him mice,” Kira says, as Sarah shakes out her hand and resists the urge to book it for the monkey exhibit.

“I did.”

“Is that why he’s named Mouse?”

Rachel smiles, pleased. “It is. They’re his favorite.

“Kingsnakes are often confused for coral snakes, which are very dangerous,” she continues, sitting back down and letting Mouse slide into his tank. “But kingsnakes – and, in fact, most snakes – don’t intend anyone any harm. They’re the victims of false advertising.”

“Sort of sad,” Sarah says, crouching down to get a better look at the tank. Her arm is still tingling a little – probably from Mouse being wrapped around it, and not from Rachel’s fingers brushing against Sarah’s skin.

“I agree,” Rachel says. “Which, of course, is why I’m here.”

“You must deal with a lot of shit, yeah?”

Rachel must look at Kira, because behind Sarah her daughter says: “She says stuff like that around me a lot. It’s okay.”

“She’s not allowed,” Sarah says.

“I’m not allowed until I’m  _eighteen_.”

“Your mother is looking out for you,” Rachel says. When Sarah looks at her Rachel smiles, again, and  _fuck_. Sarah looks back at Mouse. He’s slithered on over to his water dish and is flicking his tongue into it, blank-eyed. Alright, so he’s sort of cute. Whatever.

“The visitors to the zoo are mostly open-minded,” Rachel says. She recrosses one leg over the other; her leg brushes against Sarah’s shoulder a little bit, and then she’s settled. “I enjoy talking to all of you.”

“Every day,” Sarah says.

“Well. It is my job.”

“Sure is,” Sarah says. The two of them look at each other and then Sarah looks back at the tank. Fuck, she wishes Kira was off getting her face painted or something, this is awkward now. “That’s your job,” Sarah says, again. It isn’t any more helpful this time.

Kira has sidled closer to the tank. “Do you like Mouse now?”

“He’s growin’ on me.”

“He wasn’t that bad,” Kira says, “when I held him.”

“Well,” Rachel says, “you’re welcome back to hold him again whenever you’d like.”

“Okay,” Kira says. “But not now. Because we’re going to see the monkeys,  _right Mom?”_

 _No,_ that isn’t the plan. “Right,” Sarah says. “Monkey time, yeah, monkey?”

Kira holds out her hand impatiently and Sarah takes it. “Sorry we keep comin’ back,” she says to Rachel.

“Any time,” Rachel says. “I mean it,” and Kira tugs Sarah away before Sarah can find some clumsy way to transition into actual, full-on flirting. She goes to the monkeys. She looks at the monkeys. She makes jokes to Kira and Kira shrieks in laughter, which will never ever stop making Sarah’s entire heart explode into love. She loves her daughter more than she’s ever loved anything else.

…which means she’s sorry, when she ditches Kira in the gift shop with a twenty-dollar bill and a promise to  _not move_. She really is. She’s sorry. But there’s only so many times she can keep buying tickets to the zoo.

Two teenagers are clearing away from Mouse’s tank when Sarah gets there, shrieking at each other in a high pitch somewhere between fear and excitement. They’ve got their phone cameras trained on each other. Rachel looks deeply pained; then her eyes move to Sarah, and her whole face changes.

“Hello again,” she says, smiling, and then she clocks Kira’s absence and blinks. “Is your daughter alright?”

“Gift shop,” Sarah says, slightly out of breath. “I, uh. Wanted to see. Mouse.”

“I’m sure he’s very flattered by your visit,” Rachel says. “Unfortunately he’s had rather a long day, and so he’s decided to hide until he stops receiving visitors.”

Sure enough: Mouse is hidden under a fake log inside of his tank. Only his tail is visible, and even that looks freaked out.

“Oh,” Sarah says.

“You’ll have to settle for me, I’m afraid,” Rachel says.

“I dunno,” Sarah says. “You’re not the looker of the two of you.”

Rachel frowns down at Mouse’s tank. “It’s unfortunate how we have to compete. More unfortunate how frequently I lose.”

“Don’t know what to say, he’s a full 10,” Sarah says. “Otherwise he wouldn’t stand a chance.” She feels her neck heat but doesn’t look at it. Rachel looks at her, smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

“As flattering as that is,” she says, “you  _are_ still implying that I’ve lost to a snake. One that I believe you described as ‘slimy’.”

“Oi,” Sarah says, offended, “that was  _ages_  ago. He’s grown on me, hasn’t he!”

“Has he,” Rachel says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “A lot. Came all the way here to spend time with him, didn’t I?”

Is it Sarah’s imagination or are Rachel’s cheeks a little red. Probably her imagination. Almost definitely. She still wants to believe it isn’t.

“He’s glad to see you,” Rachel says quietly.

“Tell him I’m sorry I missed him,” Sarah says. She shoves her hands in the back pockets of her pants and shifts from foot to foot. “It’d be great to see him. Uh. Outside of the bloody zoo.”

Oh no, Rachel’s face is definitely a little red now. She looks at Mouse’s tank and then looks at Mouse. “I could arrange that,” she says, voice slightly strained. “But not during work hours.”

“No,” Sarah says, “‘course not, couldn’t have that. Not during work hours. Who’s gonna teach kids about snakes?”

Rachel gives her an amused look through her eyelashes, rummages in the pocket of her uniform. “We should schedule something,” she says. “I don’t seem to have a business card – hm.” She finds a pen, clicks it with her thumb. “Would it be  _terribly_ unprofessional for me to give you my personal cell.”

“Not at all,” Sarah says. She holds out her hand so fast she almost breaks her bone from whiplash. “So professional. Bloody – fabulous customer service, or some shite. Rachel can I just get your number.”

Rachel lets out the world’s smallest laugh and takes Sarah’s hand in hers. “I’d be delighted,” she murmurs, and writes the digits on the back of Sarah’s hand in neat, cramped handwriting. “I am expecting you to call it.”

“Trust me,” Sarah says. “I’m gonna call it.”

“Good,” Rachel says. She leans back, clicks the pen again, tucks it back into her pocket. “And of course Mouse will be expecting your visit in a few days.”

“Oh,” Sarah says.

“He’s grown very fond of you. Next time I think he’ll attempt the journey up to your neck.”

Sarah makes a noise that is something like  _ngah_  and shudders. “Sadist,” she says. “You’re a sadist.”

Rachel laughs again. “Go find your daughter,” she says. “If a lion has eaten her and the zoo finds my telephone number on your hand, I’ll be fired. And I will have to steal Mouse on my way out, and that would be a tragedy.”

“God forbid,” Sarah says. She backs away from Rachel. “So, uh. Bye.”

“Goodbye,” Rachel says. Sarah books it for the gift shop, cell number burning on the back of her hand. When she gets to the gift shop Kira is sitting patiently by the door, holding a rubber kingsnake and winding it around her arm.

“I’m going to name him Mouse,” she says, when Sarah gets there. “He isn’t as cute as actual Mouse, though.”

“Still pretty cute,” Sarah says. Kira grabs Sarah’s hand and they make their way out of the zoo and to the car.

“Yeah,” Kira says. “Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I might sort of like snakes. Or at least kingsnakes.”

“You know what?” Sarah says. “Me too.”


	21. Motorbike (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic is inspired by [this piece of fanart](https://angerycat.tumblr.com/post/172430490507/im-assuming-anybody-who-sees-this-knows-that), which is -- hilariously -- based on another fic of mine! We're just a big ouroboros of love here, folks.

Sarah is just straddling her motorbike when she hears the sound of heels and a crisp voice saying: “I will pay you thirty dollars to drive me home.”

Sarah turns. The voice belongs to a woman about Sarah’s age in an obscenely short dress the color of dusk, spangled with stars. Besides that she’s only wearing a wickedly sharp pair of heels and a vaguely impatient expression. Her hair is blonde, short. Her hand is clenched tight around her clutch purse. Sarah immediately falls in love.

“Do I look like an Uber,” she says.

“Quite frankly you look like you could use thirty dollars.”

Sarah weighs her plans for the night against the concept of this blonde pressed against her back for the next ten minutes. It’s not a long decision.

“Get on,” she says. “Where’re we headed.”

“I’ll give you directions,” says the blonde. She eyes the motorcycle with a vague frown and then delicately climbs on behind Sarah. Her skirt rides up way too high; Sarah looks away before she embarrasses herself. 

“I don’t have helmets,” she says.

The blonde’s arm wraps around Sarah’s stomach; she tucks her chin against Sarah’s shoulder. “Dangerous living.”

“Sure,” Sarah says. She revs the motor; the bike purrs to life, thrumming and eager. “Do I get a name out of you?”

“Rachel. May I have the pleasure?”

“Sarah,” says Sarah, and pulls them onto the road. 

“You’ll turn left on Queen,” Rachel says. Her mouth is very close to Sarah’s ear. Her fingertips are pressed lightly to the skin of Sarah’s stomach, so there’s only a thin layer of lace between her hand and Sarah’s skin. Either a bad idea or a great idea to wear a shirt that was mostly lace. Probably a good idea.

“So,” she says into the wind, trying to keep her voice loud enough for Rachel to hear but not loud enough to deafen her. “There a reason you’re desperate enough to hop on the back of a stranger’s bike, Rachel?”

“This evening’s date drove me to dinner,” Rachel says. Exhales through her nose in a warm burst of air that skitters along Sarah’s skin. “It wasn’t an especially pleasant date. I  _was_  going to call for a lift of some kind, but. I have always wanted a ride on a motorcycle.

“And you seemed…” Rachel says, pausing for a deliberate second, “…sweet.”

“No I didn’t.”

“No,” Rachel says, “you didn’t.”

Sarah turns left on Queen, swinging them around. Rachel’s arm digs into Sarah’s stomach a little bit and Sarah hears the breathless edge of a laugh. She’d felt like that too, the first time; she’d screamed a laugh into the empty 3am streets, driven so long and so far that she’d come limping back after dawn. The bike growls. It hums against the palms of Sarah’s hands. She doesn’t want to go wherever Rachel wants them to go, she wants to keep driving like this – she wants Rachel to whisper directions and she wants to drive there, going absolutely nowhere at all.

“That bad a date?” she says. Yells. Hopefully says.

“Do you ever regret being attracted to men, Sarah?”

Sarah laughs. It comes out more of a cackle, but she blames the motorbike adrenaline. “Yeah,” she says. “But I like girls too, so. Y’know. It evens out.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” Rachel says. Her palm splays against Sarah’s stomach.  _Oh_ holy fuck. The night immediately looks up.

“Right,” Rachel says, “right, now, turn–” and Sarah sends them screaming through a yellow light, war-whoops at the top of her lungs. She’s still laughing, breathless with it, when she feels Rachel’s mouth press – soft, slow – to the column of her neck. Then she stops laughing.

“If I’ve misinterpreted,” Rachel says against Sarah’s throat, voice low and rough For a second the only sound is the wind tangling Sarah’s hair out behind her, the low hungry thrum of the motor.

“You haven’t,” Sarah says.

Rachel bites. It’s slow and sweet and vicious and Sarah almost swerves them across three lanes. “Left at the next street,” Rachel says, and kisses higher along Sarah’s throat. Her hand moves across Sarah’s stomach, thumb teasing at the waistband of Sarah’s shorts.

“I’m gonna crash,” Sarah says. Somehow. Somehow she manages to talk; she’s pretty sure the wind gets the sound, but she feels Rachel smiling against her throat anyways.

“You won’t,” Rachel says. Her thumb snags in Sarah’s belt loop. Sarah turns them left. It’s a little shaky, but she can’t be blamed for that. She can feel Rachel’s bare leg pressed against her bare leg. Rachel’s back against her back. Rachel’s other hand stroking along the curve of Sarah’s knee, the soft warmth of her palm.

“ _Shite_ ,” Sarah says. Rachel leans forward to kiss Sarah’s chin and Sarah wobbles – almost hits a valet – doesn’t hit a valet. “You’re gonna–” she says, and “I’m gonna–” and Rachel says “Shh” sweet and quiet against Sarah’s neck.

“Right at the end of the block,” she says. Sarah is so wet she thinks she’s going to die from it. She turns right. Behind her, she feels Rachel’s hips roll into the thrum of the motorcycle and Sarah is going to lose her goddamn mind, she is, she’s going to drive straight into a car just to feel something go boom.

“Right,” Rachel gasps, and Sarah turns right. 

“Mm,” Rachel says, and a few other things that aren’t words.

“Rachel,” Sarah says, “Rachel, Rachel, come on, where am I going.”

“Right,” Rachel says, and presses herself in one long needy line against Sarah’s back. “You’re beautiful. I’m going to keep you. I want you to drive me everywhere, will you drive me everywhere – Sarah–”

The motor purrs thunder. Sarah feels her hips twitch; she keeps her feet steady, hands steady, head steady. (Mostly steady.) Rachel’s hands spasm against Sarah’s stomach – the lace itches, Sarah goes mad. She listens to Rachel’s quiet anguished sounds under the unbearable roar of the wind. She keeps thinking of Rachel behind her – the way she must look, the edge of her dress riding up, her hips rolling forward and colliding with Sarah’s hips. 

“Right,” says Rachel. Sarah turns. Partway through the swooping curve she feels Rachel shudder against her back and she almost crashes them, again. Rachel slowly uncoils against her back. Sarah has almost bitten through her lip.

“We’re here,” Rachel says lowly. Sarah pulls them over shakily under the scathing eye of a valet–

The one she’d almost hit.

They went in a circle.

Rachel takes advantage of Sarah processing this to detach herself, step off the motorbike. She pats at her hair. She looks wind-ruffled, but not ruffled any other way; that’s not fair, Sarah thinks her entire body is probably on fire.

Rachel frowns at the bike. “Your seat may be wet,” she says. “My apologies.” She opens up her clutch and rummages – and Sarah looks at the seat, and Rachel’s right. It’s glistening. Sarah kicks down the kickstand, vaults off the bike, crashes into Rachel and tugs Rachel’s mouth to hers. Rachel tastes like wind and wine. Sarah curls her fingers into Rachel’s windswept hair, licks the whole journey out of Rachel’s mouth. Rachel hums a needy sound and her hand finds Sarah’s hip; her thumb curls into Sarah’s belt loop again.

“ _Excuse me_ ,” says the valet. “You can’t do that here–”

Rachel breaks the kiss, rummages in her clutch, finds a wad of bills. Shoves them at the valet. “Park her motorcycle,” she says, voice thrillingly rough. 

“That’s–”

“I live here,” Rachel says. Her voice is scathing and ice. “Park the vehicle that I tell you to park. Is that not the entirety of your position?”

He takes the bills. He gets on Sarah’s motorbike, wincing. Sarah thinks of the damp that Rachel left and feels something furious and possessive go growling through her.

“Mate,” she says, “if you crash that, I’m ending you.”

Rachel’s hands lace over Sarah’s stomach and her chin finds Sarah’s shoulder again. “I agree,” she says.

The valet rolls the bike away. Rachel stays where she is, too close, not close enough.

“You haven’t any way to get home,” she murmurs. “I suppose you’ll have to come up.”

“Don’t know if I’ll make it to your apartment,” Sarah says.

“Well,” Rachel says, “I do hope no one else needs the elevator.” She untangles herself and makes for her building, heels clicking on the ground. Her dress glitters in the nighttime citylights. Sarah runs a hand through her hair and follows.


	22. Assassins

Rachel turns on the light in her apartment to see Sarah sitting at her dining table, absentmindedly flicking a butterfly knife around her knuckles. She’s wearing all black. As always. “Hey,” she says. “Brought wine.”

“You  _stole_  wine,” Rachel says, instead of her other options – like  _where did you come from_ or  _when did you get back in town_ or  _how did you break into my apartment_. They’re pointless questions. Sarah won’t answer them. Rachel puts down her keys, unbuttons her blazer and hangs it up.

“Can’t afford your taste in wine,” Sarah says affably, sticking the knife in the pocket of her jacket. “It’s on the counter. Bring us a glass, yeah?”

“How long are you here,” Rachel says. She moves to her kitchen – Sarah was right, the wine is very good. She’s pleased Sarah knows her tastes. She opens a drawer and finds a corkscrew, along with a handful of knives that weren’t there when she left. Sarah tends to tuck them around Rachel’s apartment, like a cat dragging home dead birds.

“Depends on how long it takes,” Sarah says.

Rachel pours the wine.

“Three days,” Sarah says. “Tops.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve been here a bit, yeah?”

Rachel doesn’t say  _I was waiting for you_ , because she isn’t that pathetic. She pours two glasses of wine, takes one, leans up against her kitchen counter. “Someone continues to steal my jobs,” she says, folding one leg over the other. She takes a sip of wine and it unfolds across her tongue, slow and sweet. “This is an excellent vintage. Did someone die for it?”

“He was already dead,” Sarah says. She stands, prowls through the living room and to the counter and then her weight is pinning Rachel to the counter. She’s very warm, as always.

“Missed you,” Sarah says.

Rachel puts her wine glass down. She cups Sarah’s chin in her hand, rubs her thumb against Sarah’s bottom lip. “I appreciated the present,” she murmurs. “Although I did have to leave it in a man’s eye socket. In Berlin.”

“You bitch,” Sarah murmurs back. “You know how hard it is smuggling knives across the border?” She nips at the edge of Rachel’s thumb. Her teeth are very sharp.

“It isn’t,” Rachel says. Sarah grins against Rachel’s fingerprint.

“It really isn’t,” she says, and then Rachel can’t bear it: she leans forward and kisses her. It’s sweet for approximately half a second before Sarah grabs onto Rachel like a wildfire catching, her hands everywhere, her mouth fever-warm. She grabs Rachel’s hips and hoists her onto the counter; Rachel wraps her legs around Sarah’s legs, pulls her in close.  _I missed you,_ she says with her teeth. Sarah’s lip bleeds into Rachel’s mouth, mingling with the aftertaste of the wine. Rachel hums, strokes Sarah’s back, reaches into the pocket of Sarah’s jacket and wraps her hand around the knife.

“Bitch,” Sarah murmurs again, sweet as honey against Rachel’s mouth. “Don’t take my things, that’s not nice.”

Rachel slides the knife out of Sarah’s pocket, puts it on the counter next to her. “Stop me,” she breathes, and then pulls Sarah’s lower lip into her mouth.

Sarah’s hips against Rachel’s hips, and Sarah’s hands stroking down the curve of Rachel’s rib cage, and Sarah’s mouth warm and bleeding into Rachel’s mouth. “Yeah,” Sarah says, “yeah, I could stop you–”

Rachel’s hand slaps down Sarah’s, where it has started inching across the counter towards the knife. “Not  _now_ ,” Rachel says.

Sarah moves her mouth to Rachel’s neck, kisses along the skin there like she’s starving for it. “Someday,” she says.

“Mm,” Rachel says. She tilts her head back; she bares her throat. “You seem very certain that you  _could_.”

Sarah licks along Rachel’s collarbone. She bites down. She doesn’t say anything, which is probably for the best; Rachel doesn’t want to think about it, that inevitable point in the future where their handlers will say  _we have a problem_  and then a two-syllable name. It will happen. Each moment they have is stolen, like the desperate gifts Sarah keeps dragging back between her teeth.

“Terrible animal,” Rachel says, tangling her fingers in Sarah’s hair. “I missed you.”

Sarah groans, starts unbuttoning Rachel’s shirt and kissing all the skin she finds. “Keep the knife,” she says.

“I’ll keep it,” Rachel says. She closes her eyes and feels the press of Sarah’s mouth against the skin over her heart.


	23. Firewatch AU

The sun is just beginning to set outside the lookout tower and the air is clear and gold when Sarah says into her radio: “Hey. Truth or dare?”

For a second she thinks Rachel isn’t going to respond, and then Sarah’s radio bursts into its familiar crackle and Rachel says: “You do have a job to do, you know.”

“What,” Sarah says, “you can’t watch for fires and play truth or dare at the same time? Pretty weak, Rachel.”

The soft warm burst of static means Rachel’s just let out a breath through her nose. Sarah drops into the chair of her tower room, spins back and forth a little bit. Waits. 

“I don’t have time to play games with you,” Rachel says.

“Truth or dare?”

Silence from the other end of the radio. Sarah cranes her neck to see if she can spy Rachel in the other tower, but she can’t. Not without binoculars, and using the binoculars makes her feel like a piece of shit.

Instead she thumbs the radio again. “Truth or dare?”

Silence. Sarah scans the surrounding landscape out of habit: nothing. She brings the radio to her mouth. “Truth or dare?”

“You are so phenomenally irritating,” Rachel snaps, a sharp crackle from the plastic speakers. “No wonder no one wanted you. No wonder you had to come here. You’re unlovable, aren’t you. You drove everyone away.”

The radio snaps off. Sarah stares at the walkie-talkie shape of it in her hand like it’s going to bite her. It crackles on; it crackles off. Sarah keeps hearing sharp bursts of Rachel sucking in part of a breath before the radio goes back to being a piece of dead plastic. She swallows down the howl in her throat, that ache that says Rachel’s right. Sarah knows why she came here. She ran away. She just up and ran away out into the forest where her only contact is a bitch on the other end of a radio. God, it’s so beautiful out here, it’s driving her mad.

The radio bursts back to life. “Truth,” Rachel says, like an apology.

Sarah clicks the radio on and leaves it. She listens to the sound of Rachel breathing. “Uh,” she says. She leaves the radio on and she can’t think of anything. Everything is too much or not enough.

Rachel sighs again. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t have the right.”

“Why do you think I’m here,” Sarah says. She cranes her head to watch the distant shape of Rachel in the tower, an unmoving silhouette by that vast open window. Sarah knows very little about her, actually. She has short hair. It’s a bob. It’s either brown or very dark blonde, Sarah can’t tell even with binoculars. She hasn’t really seen Rachel’s face before, just the still shape of her.

“You were running from something,” Rachel says, very quietly. “Weren’t you.”

“Dare,” Sarah says. 

“I never agreed to the game, you know.”

“So you can’t think of a dare.”

“I’m perfectly capable.”

“Then tell me one, yeah?”

“Make yourself a cup of black tea,” Rachel says.

“That’s the stupidest bloody dare I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s the only thing I thought would frighten you,” Rachel says. Sarah swears she can hear the smile in Rachel’s voice. She doesn’t know what the smile would look like, but she knows the way it sounds.

“You’re the bloody worst,” she says. She turns on her shitty little stove and rummages in the cupboard for her box of tea bags. “Lucky I brought so many tea bags, yeah?”

“Of course you did. You’re British.”

The sun is setting outside. Sarah starts the kettle boiling and goes back to her chair. “You haven’t picked,” she says, throwing herself into the chair and spinning in a lopsided circle.

After a moment, Rachel says: “Dare.”

“Really.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel says, “can you not think of a dare, Sarah?”

“Take off your shirt,” Sarah spits into the radio. Then she closes her eyes in embarrassment. The radio shuts off. Sarah clicks it on from her end and says: “Rachel? Shit, sorry.”

“Truth or dare,” Rachel says.

“Sorry,” Sarah says. “Shouldn’t have asked that. Uh. Sorry. Truth.”

“I’m going to catch a chill once the sun finishes setting,” Rachel says, voice warm and amused. “But it’s hardly a problem. There isn’t anyone in these woods. There never is.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “You did it.”

“That is the spirit of the game, is it not?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “I mean. Yeah. It is.” She hunches down in her chair so she doesn’t crane her neck to look at Rachel’s lookout tower. Holy shit. She makes herself as small as possible, legs sticking out across the floor.

“Tell me about your last kiss,” Rachel says.

Sarah turns on the radio. “It was shit.” She turns it off.

A soft hum of static from Rachel. “I  _am_  risking frostbite and mosquitos for you, Sarah.”

“Some bloke,” Sarah says. Radio off. “At a club.” Radio off. “I was drunk. And high.” Radio off. “Maybe both?” Radio off. “Don’t remember. Truth or dare.”

“Truth.”

“What was yours.”

The kettle whistles, shrieking through Sarah’s held-breath silence. “ _Shite_ ,” she yelps into the radio.

“Sarah?” Rachel’s voice says, urgent. “What’s happening.”

“Nothing,” Sarah says, “ah, nothing, sorry, bloody – tea. Just a sec.” She turns off the stove pours boiling water into her one chipped mug.

“She was blonde,” Rachel says from the radio Sarah’s put down on the table. Her voice echoes through the little room. “Very sweet. Very enthusiastic. She wore strawberry lip gloss.”

Sarah doesn’t splash boiling water on herself or anything, which she considers an accomplishment. She dunks the tea bag in. “Truth,” she says. 

“How does that make you feel?”

“Makes me wish I’d brought lip gloss,” Sarah says. “Uh. To be honest. Truth or dare?”

The radio is silent.  _Fuck_ , Sarah thinks, and then Rachel says: “Truth.”

“Have you ever looked at me through your binoculars.”

“Yes.”

“Dare,” Sarah says.

“Look at me,” Rachel says. Sarah turns the radio on to say  _are you sure_  and then doesn’t, can’t. Thumbs it off again. Picks up her binoculars, stands up, looks. The sun has set and Rachel’s turned the lights on in her tower – Sarah hasn’t, because she’s shit at this and Rachel never stops telling her. She’s shit at this. Rachel’s good at it. Rachel is good at her job and Rachel is sitting in her lookout tower with her legs hugged to her chest and her head cocked to the side. Sarah can see the blurry shape of her face, the black beads of her eyes. She can see the black straps of Rachel’s bra and the endless expanse of her skin. “Hi,” Sarah says into the radio.

The distant figure raises her radio to her mouth. “Hello, Sarah.”

“Hey,” Sarah says.

“You’ve said that already.”

“No I didn’t, I said hi.”

Rachel lets out a small husk of a laugh. “I’m going to reveal my ulterior motive,” she says. “May I put my shirt back on, please. You can see that I’m very cold.”

“What if I say no,” Sarah says.

“I’ll have to ask nicely.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Yeah, don’t – don’t freeze. You can put your shirt on.”

Rachel puts her radio down on the table and stands up, finds her collared uniform shirt, pulls it back on. Sarah watches all her skin get swallowed up, watches Rachel settle back in her chair. Pick up her radio. “Are you enjoying yourself,” Rachel says.

“Truth or dare,” Sarah says with a dry mouth.

“Dare,” Rachel says.

“Come over,” Sarah says. She thumbs off the radio and lowers the binoculars and sits in her chair and thumbs the radio on and says it again: “Come here.”

The radio clicks on and it’s only static. Then: “We have jobs to do.”

“You don’t want to lose,” Sarah says, “do you? You can’t – you can’t pass on a dare. That’s the rules.”

“This is unforgivably stupid,” Rachel says. There are vague sounds from her end of the line, thumping and rustling. “Keep an eye out on the landscape.”

“I am.”

“No you aren’t.”

No, she isn’t. Sarah keeps an eye out on the landscape. Her heart is thumping like rabbit feet in her chest. 

“Are you drinking your tea,” Rachel says. The sound of her voice changes, so she must be outside now.

“Yeah,” Sarah lies.

“It’s better this way, isn’t it.”

Sarah snorts. “No.”

“You’re a disgrace,” Rachel says. Her breathing is slightly labored; her footsteps crunch through the line. “Truth or dare.”

“Truth.”

“Are you drinking your tea.”

“No.”

“Sarah. You aren’t fulfilling the rules.”

Sarah takes a sip. It’s nasty. “God,” she says. “Uck. Piss off. Truth or dare.”

“Truth, I suppose.”

“Why are you here?”

The radio clicks on: the distant sound of crickets, Rachel’s footsteps making their way towards Sarah. Sarah fumbles for the lights and turns them on and the world lights up; she squints, blinks, waits for sight and waits for sound.

“I drove everyone away,” Rachel says, voice melancholy.

Sarah doesn’t know what to say to that, so she sits in silence for a second. The radio clicks back on and Rachel’s voice unspools in one low whisper. “I was alone,” Rachel says. “Completely alone, and I had to pretend every morning that I was living the exact life I wanted to live. Every morning I put on my lipstick and my suit and it was unbearable, the lying. I wanted to own my own misery. So I left.

“My parents died in a fire,” Rachel says, and then she stops. She’s left the radio on, and Sarah can hear her: real and solid, shaped by static. “Truth or dare,” Rachel says.

“I’m here ‘cause I couldn’t – be a person,” Sarah says. “I kept screwin’ up, and everyone was disappointed. They all knew I wasn’t gonna be anything and I couldn’t stand it, yeah? Couldn’t stand the way they looked at me. Too bloody sad. So I said screw it and I ran away so no one could see me screw up.” She licks her lips, runs a hand through her hair. “Just you, I guess.”

“You haven’t failed, Sarah.”

“Not yet,” Sarah says.

“Not yet,” Rachel echoes, and Sarah hears tapping sounds from her end that are mimicked outside of the tower. Oh. Footsteps, shit. She puts the radio down on the table and then doesn’t know what to do with her hands, ends up smoothing down the front of her shirt and then standing up and then sitting back down again. Someone knocks three times on the door. Sarah almost trips over her own feet to open it.

“Hey,” she says to Rachel. Rachel: a ragged brown bob, the uniform, the freckles on her arms and the end of her nose. Chapped lips. Brown eyes.

“May I come in?” Rachel says.

Sarah holds the door open, watches Rachel. Her hair is so choppy – did she cut it herself? Sarah’s been letting hers grow out, hasn’t put a brush to it since she got here. It’s a mess and it’s down past her shoulderblades and she would have cut Rachel’s hair, if Rachel had asked her to, if Rachel had told Sarah she was doing it alone.

Rachel sits on Sarah’s bed, neat and cross-legged. When she looks at Sarah she smiles with only the corners of her mouth. Sarah hadn’t thought about the way Rachel would smile, but if she had she probably would have imagined it like this.

“Truth or dare,” Rachel says. Without the harsh buzz of static her voice is soft as fur.

“Dare,” Sarah says, shifting from foot to foot, hands clenching at her sides.

Rachel’s chin goes up a little bit. “Come here,” she says, and Sarah – pulled by invisible magnets – sits on the bed next to Rachel. “Truth or dare,” she says.

Rachel swallows. Rachel blinks. Rachel moves in a million different ways and Sarah watches all of them. “Dare,” Rachel says.

“Kiss me,” Sarah says, and Rachel does. Her mouth is steady against Sarah’s. She takes Sarah’s hand and coaxes it under her shirt, presses Sarah’s palm to the warmth of her ribcage. Sarah feels Rachel breathe, feels Rachel’s legs unfold so she can lean in closer to Sarah.

Sarah moves her hand upward, to the bottom of Rachel’s bra. Strokes her thumb along the wire and feels Rachel shudder.

“Watch for fires,” Rachel says. She straddles Sarah’s lap.

“There aren’t any,” Sarah says, “there aren’t any fires, you’re alright, we’re alright,” and she presses her mouth against Rachel’s again.


	24. Arsonist/Detective

Detective Manning is back in Rachel’s office.

She really doesn’t look like very much of a detective. She won’t even wear a suit, just a ragged black shirt and jeans, and her hair is a brown rat’s nest. The only verbs Rachel can use to describe her movement are  _skulk_  and  _prowl_. Impressive she is not.

But she is the only person who could catch Rachel.

So Rachel is intrigued.

“I don’t understand why you’ve returned,” she says, watching the detective pace around Rachel’s office – past the chair and table, past the painting on the wall, looping back around. Her hands are shoved in her pockets. “Have you established that this building is the next target?”

“No,” Detective Manning says.

“Then with all possible respect,” Rachel says. “I  _do_ have a corporation to run, Detective.”

“Sorry,” says the detective. “Sorry, just – there’s something I’m missing, I’m just following my own tracks around in bloody circles.” She runs a hand through her hair. “Can’t figure it out. How he keeps gettin’  _away_  with this. Five bloody buildings burned down.”

“I’m as invested as you are in your discovery of the arsonist’s identity.”

“I know,” Detective Manning says. “Two of ‘em were your labs, I know, I’m working on it.”

“I’m glad that it’s you,” Rachel says. “Detective Manning.”

The detective stops. She watches Rachel, eyes wide as a spooked animal’s. “Oh,” she says. “Uh. Thanks.”

* * *

After the sixth fire, she’s more frantic. She paces more rapidly around Rachel’s office. “And you don’t know  _anyone_ who’d have motive,” she says. “Ms. Duncan, seriously, if you’ve got  _anything_ –”

“Rachel is fine.”

Detective Manning stops and gives Rachel an odd look. “Rachel. Fine. If you know  _anything_.”

Rachel has toyed with the idea of sending the detective after her competitors, like an attack dog; ultimately she’s decided it’s too high risk to even imply someone in her position could have motive. Could have reason. Could manage to obtain the sheer, sparking rush one can only get from watching someone else’s livelihood scream into flame.

“I’ve told you everything I can think of,” Rachel says. She folds her hands in front of her and mirrors Detective Manning’s pacing, slower, inside of the circle. “I’ve opened up our employee records. Have the other–”

“Yeah,” says the detective. “I tried that route already. Can’t find jack shit. Sorry.”

“I don’t mind cursing, Detective.”

“Sarah.”

Rachel raises her eyebrows in polite puzzlement. Sarah shrugs. “It’s only fair.”

“Sarah,” Rachel says – slowly, so she can savor it. “I know you’re trying your very best. Do let me know if there’s any other way I could contribute to your investigation.”

“Just call,” Sarah says. “If you think of  _anything_. Rachel. Please.”

“Of course,” Rachel says softly, and she smiles.

* * *

Unfortunately for Sarah, it’s even better now: once the sparks catch and the fire starts roaring Rachel can imagine the ash, and Sarah walking through the ash. Detective Manning, only Rachel is allowed to call her  _Sarah_. Imagine that. Imagine Sarah walking through the aftermath of Rachel’s love, crunching all the building shards further into ash.

* * *

Rachel does.

Imagine it.

She thinks about it more than she should.

* * *

Unfortunately for  _Rachel_ , Sarah stops coming by after fire number seven. Rachel should have pieced out her evidence more slowly, in retrospect; she should have left Sarah dangling on the hook, pierced and desperate. Instead she sits in her office and listens for the sound of footsteps that aren’t coming to the door. She imagines Sarah: out there somewhere, interviewing someone, leading herself further and further away from the heart of the fire. She must lie awake at night thinking about Rachel, and also thinking about Rachel. She must have a bulletin board where she has all the disparate pieces of Rachel pinned down in all the wrong shapes.

Eight, nine. She gets cocky. She misses Sarah.

Eventually she gets too impatient, and goes to the police station. Says something blithe and insincere about her investment in the investigation. They shouldn’t let her see the evidence board; they do, because Rachel is important, because Rachel is charming enough to make her way anywhere.

The photos are low-quality, but that’s fine. Rachel touches her fingers to someone’s scrawl:  _not a psychopath_. It’s underlined three times. She appreciates their faith in her.

“Ms. Duncan,” says Sarah’s voice. 

“I’ve told you to call me Rachel.”

“Rachel,” Sarah says. “You’re not supposed to be here, yeah? Did you think of something that might help? You could call, or somethin’.”

Rachel turns, studies Sarah: uniformless, terrible, exhausted.  _No one’s died_ , she wants to tell Sarah. Her voice would be amused and comforting and Sarah would fold under it like a desperate animal.  _You haven’t failed anyone. You could just let me do this_.

Sarah is likely heroic, or noble, or something along those lines. She would disagree. It would be terribly dull.

“I wanted to see the investigation for myself,” she says. “Not that I lack faith in you, Sarah.”

“There’s not a lot to go on,” Sarah says. She hunches up. “Sorry. Promise you we’re trying, we’re bustin’ our bloody balls tryin’ to get this guy.”

“Mm.” Rachel turns back to the board, peeks through the cracks of it to try and find herself. “If anyone could, I do believe it would be you.”

When she looks back at Sarah, Sarah’s ducked her head; she is scuffing her foot on the ground like a small child. “Cheers,” Sarah says. “Hasn’t gotten me anywhere yet, though.”

Rachel leaves the evidence board. She passes Sarah; she touches her fingertips to Sarah’s shoulder. “Oh,” she says, “I’m sure it will.”

* * *

Ten.

Eleven.

Twelve.

* * *

Sarah comes back to Rachel’s office. Rachel is working late again. She always does, except for the times when she’s lying.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

“Hello again, Sarah.” Rachel doesn’t get up from her desk, doesn’t stop typing on her laptop. She can feel Sarah entering the room, the way it tunes her skin to a patient and expectant shiver.

“Hope you’re not too busy,” Sarah says.

“No busier than usual. How can I be of service.”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Rachel looks up: Sarah is studying her with something canny and slightly furious. Rachel’s heartbeat picks up and the tips of her fingers begin to tremble just a little bit.

“Sarah?” she says.

“You’re really invested in this,” Sarah says, “aren’t you.” She paces around Rachel like a shark in the water. “Askin’ me how it’s goin’. Showin’ up at the bloody  _station_. None of the others – no one from Brightborn or Trimorez or anythin’ – they don’t care the way you care. It’s just insurance policies and shit to them. Why’s that? What makes you different?”

Rachel closes her laptop. She stands up, slowly. “What do you think makes me different, Sarah?”

Sarah paces closer. “I think,” she says, “you know. What I’m thinking.”

Rachel’s heart is ramming itself against her ribcage, pattering like feet on the ground. “Ah,” she breathes. “You’ve found me out.”

Sarah comes closer, still and certain with canine intent. When she gets close enough, Rachel bridges the distance and kisses her.

It’s fairly pleasant, as kisses go. Sarah is shocked enough to not move but her mouth is very soft. Rachel manages – with great restraint – to not smile against Sarah’s mouth. She keeps her face screwed up into something desperate; when she steps back, she can feel tension tightening the lines of her face.

“I’ve misjudged,” she says, gleeful with the way her voice is strained and soft.

“I,” Sarah says. Her eyes are round and her face is flushed. Her hands clench, unclench, and then she stumbles forward and kisses Rachel again. She has her arms clenched around Rachel’s forearms and she kisses with a rough, heady need. Rachel sucks on Sarah’s lower lip and Sarah lets out a soft sound, a trembling whine. Then she steps back.

“No,” she says. “No, no, I – you’re involved with my bloody  _case_ , I can’t. Duncan. Rachel. I, uh, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

She spins on her foot and moves to leave – and Rachel steps after her, grabs her arm. “Sarah,” she says. “Do you want this?”

Sarah tenses but doesn’t move. Rachel gambles on letting her arm go, slowly. “I want this,” she whispers. “You’re the only person who has tried to make this right. You’re brave, and honest, and sure. I want – I want  _you_ , Sarah.”

Sarah turns around in one endless rusty movement. “We shouldn’t,” she says. Her eyes are still so wide. Rachel steps in closer – too close – and curls her hand softly over Sarah’s hip.

“Tell me to stop,” she says.

Sarah’s eyes dart away. Rachel kisses her again. This time Sarah grabs onto her tightly, like she’s afraid Rachel will crumble into ash if she lets go.

Rachel keeps her eyes open the entire time. She watches the way Sarah shakes, and preserves it in her memory so that she can always have it. She doesn’t want to lose it, this, Sarah kissing her, Sarah trembling herself completely apart.

* * *

During the thirteenth fire, she plays the memory again: Sarah’s eyelashes fluttering, Sarah’s mouth against her mouth. The fire and the memory feel just the same.


	25. Florist/CEO

“Look,” Sarah says, chasing after the twittery receptionist she’s been pursuing for three hallways, “this is a  _huge_ bloody order,  _someone_  needs to sign for it–”

“I’m very sorry but I don’t have the authority!” the receptionist says breathlessly, moving at a surprising clip considering the heels. “I’m going to, um, I’m going to find you – someone – to sign–” and then she ducks in the elevator right as the doors are closing, and Sarah is left standing there with her stupid fucking clipboard and a truck full of flowers waiting outside. Her hair is escaping its ponytail and curling around her face in dark, sweaty twists. She’s furious.

Sarah charges back down the hallway towards the terrace where this stupid party is supposed to take place and goes right up to the first person she sees. She looks important – corporate blonde bob, black skirt suit, the most unimpressed face Sarah has ever seen on a human being. Sarah elbows her way through the surrounding crowd of sycophants and shoves the clipboard into her face.

“Sign for the flowers,” she says.

Around her, conversation stops.

Corporate Barbie blinks at her. “Excuse me?” she says.

“The flowers,” Sarah says. “I need a signature before I start cartin’ ‘em in for the–” (she checks the sign behind her) “gala. It’s in a few hours, yeah? I don’t have time for bloody bureaucracy, I don’t care who signs this, I just need a bloody signature on the bloody clipboard so I can bring the bloody flowers to your bloody party.” She shoves the pen in the blonde’s general direction. The air is so still and silent around her that it feels like someone just died – or realistically that someone is  _about_  to die, and that someone is Sarah.

The blonde takes the pen and scrawls out a spiky  _Rachel Duncan_. Sarah yanks the clipboard back with a muttered “Ta” and goes to recover her flower arrangements from where they are  _definitely_ going to shit in the truck. Fuck corporate. Fuck corporate parties. She is never doing this shit again.

 

…or at least that’s the plan, until she gets another delivery to DYAD one week later. Some book signing apparently won’t be complete until they get an insane amount of orchids (why every single corporate event wants orchids Sarah will never understand). This time Sarah doesn’t even waste her time with the DYAD office building – she makes her way straight to the event space. Thank god that bitch from last time – Rachel? it was Rachel, right? – is there again, talking seriously with the man whose face is splashed all over the posters. Must be the author. Great.

“Flowers,” Sarah says, holding out the clipboard. Rachel takes the clipboard and studies it for a second. Sarah makes eye contact with the skeleton-looking man standing next to her and gives him a bit of a nod; he studies the messy bun her hair is in and her sweat-stained outfit, sneers, looks pointedly away. Well, fuck him.

“We specified yellow orchids,” Rachel murmurs. “Is that what we’ve received?”

“Rachel,” says the man with a furrowed brow, “why does that matter?”

Rachel ignores him. Raises her eyebrows at Sarah.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, resisting the urge to fold her arms over her chest. “We take a lot of care with custom orders. Fresh yellow orchids.”

“Good,” Rachel murmurs, and signs. She slides the pen back onto the clipboard. “And your name?”

“Sarah.”

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “I’ll be sure to leave you a favorable review.” She somehow smiles at Sarah with just her eyes and then hands the clipboard back to Sarah and leaves. Sarah is left with the book’s author; they stare at each other with equal bafflement, and then Sarah goes to set up.

* * *

She actually leaves Sarah a review on Yelp, and emails the company to let them know Sarah did a good job. What the fuck. Sarah crashes on her couch that night and reads the review, left by an anonymous source, all proper punctuation and five-syllable words that basically say  _she did good with the flowers_. It’s wild. Sarah’s never gotten a good review in her life; she doesn’t know what to do with it.

On a whim, she googles Rachel’s name.

First result:  _DYAD Corporation welcomes its youngest-ever CEO_.

Sarah slams her laptop shut. Oh  _fuck_.

* * *

Sarah keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the other shoe is just…an endless amount of DYAD events that all ask for her company specifically. Apparently Sarah actually did a really good job and the CEO of DYAD actually really wants Sarah to deliver the flowers even though Sarah actually cursed her out the first time she bumped into her. Bloody hell. Christ.

Violets, roses, endless pink and purple orchids. At this point no one even gives Sarah a second glance when she goes tearing through the DYAD building trucking enormous garlands and flower arrangements. She doesn’t see Rachel any of the times, which isn’t disappointing or anything. If Rachel can’t see her, Rachel can’t remember that Sarah acted like a bitch to her face and Sarah can’t lose this job.

Which means that of course the next time Sarah sees her, she blurts out “You’re the bloody CEO.”

Rachel pries the clipboard out of Sarah’s hands and whips out a signature. It’s thirty thousand degrees, and Sarah’s uniform is sticking to her; Rachel’s wearing a sleeveless white dress and looks like if you licked her your tongue would freeze. That’s a shitty metaphor. Now Sarah’s just thinking about licking her, which is awful. Rachel’s got nice collarbones and this is awful and Sarah has to stop doing this  _right now_.

“I am,” Rachel says, raising curious eyebrows. “I would think that makes me eligible to sign.”

“It does,” Sarah says. “Uh. Ma’am.” She winces. “Thanks. I’ll take the – uh. The clipboard? Please? Thanks.”

Rachel narrows her eyes in some sort of bafflement and offers the clipboard back. “You were more interesting before,” she says.

“What?” Sarah says, like an idiot.

“When you weren’t frightened,” Rachel says, dropping that fortune cookie on Sarah and then making her way purposefully to someone on the other side of the event. (Something about stem cells? Sarah doesn’t know what any of these events are or what the hell they mean.) Sarah blinks at it for a few seconds and then shoves the clipboard under her arm and retreats.

 _You were more interesting when you weren’t frightened._ What – what the  _hell_  does that mean.

* * *

The DYAD events keep happening. Sarah sees Rachel at more of them, though she doesn’t know how the hell Rachel has time – she’s the  _CEO_ , how is she  _always there_ to sign Sarah’s clipboard in a variety of short dresses and high heels and, once, a ballgown whose neck dipped in a V all the way to Rachel’s ribs and practically gave Sarah a heart attack. 

(It’s not that she’s got a crush, it’s just that Rachel is hot and Sarah is terrified of her. That’s normal, right?) 

Rachel asks Sarah questions about the flowers and Sarah stutters out the answers that Rachel should really already know and then Rachel says  _good_  and smiles like Sarah’s done her a personal service. Sarah swears she smells roses even when there aren’t roses, when she’s home, when she’s thinking about Rachel’s fucking legs. Why is DYAD ordering so many roses.  _Why is Rachel always there_.

DYAD’s fucking CEO signing Sarah’s clipboard and and touching Sarah’s arm and leaving her Yelp reviews and telling her that she should grab a water bottle from the table because  _if you melt in the heat we’ll have no flowers, Sarah_. She says Sarah’s name a lot. She curls it around her mouth in weird ways and Sarah wants Rachel to keep saying it; Sarah doesn’t want anyone but Rachel to say her name, which definitely means she has a crush. Oh god. Oh fuck.

Stupid fucking roses. Why the  _hell_  is DYAD ordering so many roses. It’s not even Valentine’s Day.

* * *

Sarah’s taking inventory of their remaining roses (it’s not good news) when the bell on the shop jingles. It sounds about as surprised as Sarah does – no one comes into the shop, everyone orders online. She jogs back into the shop, pulling her hair into a ponytail, and–

–trips over a crack in the floor and almost faceplants into a bouquet of casablanca lilies. So Rachel is here, in the shop, looking around the place and frowning like she’s considering how to buy it and, who knows, add more glass and marble. “Hello, Sarah,” she says.

“Hey,” Sarah says. “Uh. Y’know someone puts in your deliveries for you, yeah? They’ve got it under control.”

“I’m aware,” Rachel says. She steps deeper into the shop, trailing her fingers over various petals as she goes. Sarah stumbles her way back behind the counter and somehow doesn’t sink to the floor. “So,” she says.

“I wanted you to make me a bouquet,” Rachel says. Her eyes are bright and curious.

“Oh,” Sarah says. “For what? I mean, just, y’know, for – for a date or–” she manages to stop herself.

“No,” Rachel says. She strolls up to the counter and leans her weight against it. “Surprise me.”

“Alright,” Sarah says, keeping her eyes on Rachel’s face and not on anything else that might or might not be revealed by Rachel leaning forward against the counter. “It’s gonna take a bit.”

“That’s fine. I’ll wait.” Rachel seems content to not move, just go on studying the shop like it’s actually interesting.

“There’s a stool,” Sarah mutters. She gestures to the stool behind the counter. Rachel makes her way to it – past Sarah, fuck – and settles onto it like it’s a seventeen thousand dollar designer seat. She folds one leg over the other and watches Sarah.

Sarah swallows, and makes for the lilies. Good thing she didn’t crash into them.

“I don’t think I know anything about you, Sarah,” Rachel says conversationally as Sarah’s trekking through the store to find the last of their lavender.

“I sell flowers,” Sarah says.

She can almost  _hear_  Rachel smirking.

“I’m in a band,” Sarah says. “I watch a lot of  _Star Trek_ ’cause my friend got me into it for a convention but then I just ended up liking it, so. Yeah. Uh. You?” She draws the last word out because  _what_  the fuck.

“DYAD,” Rachel says. “It consumes my waking hours. Occasionally my dreams as well.” Sarah comes back to the counter with arms full of blooms, dumps them over by the paper, watches Rachel look down at her hands. “I have very little time for anything else.”

“Sorry,” Sarah says. She adds some lily of the valley, and some white roses since apparently Rachel likes them so much. She stares at Rachel until Rachel looks up and catches her, gives her the small edge of a smile. Sarah looks back down. Needs more purple. She heads back into the store.

“How has it been,” Rachel says. “Being employed by DYAD, however marginally.”

“Good,” Sarah says. “You run a tight ship, yeah? Usually corporate shite’s much worse than this. So. Cheers.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Rachel murmurs, and then Sarah is in her sight again. Rachel is watching Sarah. Sarah keeps making the fucking bouquet, god she wants to be done with this bouquet, she can’t stop looking at where Rachel’s skirt is riding up.

Rachel doesn’t stop looking at her. Sarah fumbles the wrapping on the bouquet but then it’s done, finally, and she hands it to Rachel. It’s all white and purple and silvery edges and she likes it, actually. She doesn’t like giving it away.

“Thank you,” Rachel says. She shifts the bouquet to the crook of her arm and hands Sarah her card. There’s a few more awkward moments of silence while Sarah swipes it and Rachel signs and Sarah doesn’t know what to say besides  _I don’t like doing bouquets but come back whenever, please, so I can do another one for you_.

Rachel hands Sarah the familiar jagged line of her signature and then swallows and says: “Sarah.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says.

“Would you like to have dinner,” Rachel says. “Sometime. This won’t affect your contract with DYAD, of course, unless you’re uncomfortable enough that you’d like to terminate it. In which case–”

Sarah leans across the counter and smashes her mouth against Rachel’s, a stupid sloppy lurch of a kiss that is better than Sarah jumping up and down and screaming. She almost does that anyways, just because Rachel reaches up the hand that isn’t holding the bouquet and cups Sarah’s chin with it and her hand is so insanely soft and Sarah wants to do cartwheels.

She leans back. “Fuck,” she says. “Yes, yeah, god yeah. Let’s have dinner.”

“Really,” Rachel says. A pleased smile is fighting to break through the curve of her lips.

“Absolutely,” Sarah says. 

“Well,” Rachel says. “That is a relief. I don’t have any other florists on dial.” She shifts the bouquet and says: “Shall I call the shop, or do you have a personal telephone.”

Sarah scrawls out her cell number on a post-it and leans in to stick it on the wrapping paper of Rachel’s bouquet. “Call me,” she says, and then she can’t help it: she kisses Rachel again, soft and easy. Rachel lets out a breath and kisses back, and then breaks the kiss.

“I’ve left my driver outside,” she says apologetically.

“Wait,” Sarah says, “seriously?”

“The bouquet was…improvised.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Oh shit. Well. Go – go back to your car then, Rachel, Christ.”

“I’ll call,” Rachel says. She adjusts a flower in the bouquet and says: “Thank you for the flowers.” Then she leaves the shop, each footstep precise. The bell lets out a completely overwhelmed jingle as she leaves.

Sarah sinks to the floor. The second her ass hits the ground, she understands why Rachel kept ordering roses. “ _Fuck_ ,” she says, and bangs her head against the counter.


	26. Cop/Criminal

“I got you something,” Sarah says, and Rachel’s shoulders go stiff. Sarah feels the same way she feels every time Rachel’s shoulders go stiff: a queasy mix of pride, guilt, and anger.

“You didn’t,” Rachel says. She sounds exhausted. She turns around at the kitchen table, hands clenched white-knuckle on her mug of tea. They’re the only sign that Rachel is tired, that Rachel has been tired for ages, that Sarah is making Rachel tired. Otherwise Rachel looks fine. Her makeup is perfect, as always. Her uniform is crisp. Her eyes are sharp.

Sarah watches Rachel’s hands and shoulders, and she drops the beautiful silver watch on the table. Rachel’s hands and shoulders twitch. Good.

“Sarah,” Rachel says.

“Bought it for you,” Sarah says. She lifts Rachel’s mug out of her hands, gently, and then straddles Rachel’s lap. “I know you like expensive shit. I spent a lot of money on it. Don’t I get a thank you?”

“You didn’t buy it,” Rachel says, stroking her hands up the curve of Sarah’s ribs like she can’t help herself (good).

“I did,” Sarah says. She leans in close. She rests her forehead against Rachel’s forehead. “You should put it on. Babe.”

“Am I going to get a report at the station tomorrow,” Rachel whispers, “that there’s been a robbery?”

Sarah kisses her. Rachel kisses her back, and Sarah feels like shit, and Sarah feels good. She touches the tired bones of Rachel’s back and shoulders. She loves Rachel, which is always terrifying to think about. Every day she wakes up and thinks she should cut and run, and then she rolls over and sees whatever pretentious novel Rachel has left on her bedside table, and she smells lavender, and she thinks  _fuck_  and can’t go. She is furious at Rachel for this. Rachel knows.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I want to buy you things,” Sarah says. 

“I won’t continue to lie for you.”

“I can’t buy you things?” Sarah says. Vicious now: she’s untucking Rachel’s shirt in long pulls, she wants it out, she wants to touch Rachel, fuck Rachel for wearing this crisp uniform and not letting Sarah touch her, “Why can’t I do nice things for you, Rachel, huh?”

“I am not going to be able to stop you from getting  _arrested_ ,” Rachel hisses, and then she’s kissing Sarah again. She has her hands under Sarah’s shirt and she is clawing at Sarah’s back, cruel and greedy. Sarah can feel herself bleeding. She hates Rachel, which is always terrifying to think about. Sometimes she thinks Rachel hates her too. Someday Sarah is going to steal too much and she’s going to push Rachel hard enough and Rachel is going to snap and they’re both waiting for it, why are they both waiting for it, why is Sarah sticking around, why does Rachel love her enough to keep lying for her over and over again.

“Then don’t stop me,” Sarah says. She rolls her hips forward against Rachel’s hips. “Let me go.”

“ _No_ ,” Rachel says, and bites Sarah’s neck. She is digging her nails so tightly into Sarah’s back that Sarah thinks Rachel might scar her bones. Sarah drags Rachel’s mouth back to hers and kisses her. She’s starving for it. She is always starving for the feeling of Rachel’s mouth against her mouth. She loves Rachel. She really does want to bring Rachel home a pile of gold and fuck Rachel in it, she wants to give her every beautiful thing in the world. She wants to run away somewhere Rachel will never find her. She wants to go to prison, just for the relief of stopping.

“You’re mine,” Rachel whispers against Sarah’s mouth, hands everywhere and greedy. “If you would stop being so  _stupid_  about it–”

“Fuck you,” Sarah spits, “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” and she bites Rachel’s mouth ‘til it bleeds.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, too soft, and Sarah says “I’m sorry” and Rachel’s mouth is bleeding and she did that. Sarah did that. Sarah leans back and Rachel’s uniform is rumpled and Rachel’s mouth is bloody and Sarah did that. “I’m sorry,” Sarah says.

Rachel reaches up and wipes blood off of Sarah’s lower lip with the pad of her thumb. “I know you’re sorry,” she says. She sounds so deeply tired. Sarah did that too.

“I stole the bloody watch,” Sarah says.

Rachel can’t say  _I know_  to that, so she looks away. Sarah watches Rachel stare at their kitchen wall, the tea kettle Sarah got from her foster mother, the set of measuring spoons that Sarah stole. Rachel sighs out through her nose.

“I love you,” Sarah says.

“That’s the worst part,” Rachel says. “Isn’t it.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. She leans forward and rests her head on Rachel’s shoulder, closes her eyes, breathes in the smell of lavender and laundry detergent and the clinical smell of the police station that always lingers around Rachel no matter what either of them do to try and drown it out.

Rachel’s hand settles against Sarah’s scalp. “I love you,” Rachel says, and runs her fingers through Sarah’s hair.


	27. Assassins PART 2

Rachel enters the bar like a knife thrown into a dartboard. She’s wearing Sarah’s favorite dress – the silver one that looks like liquid mercury, that dips too low down her collarbones and brushes along her thighs like it can’t bear to not be touching her. Hey, Sarah can relate. At the bar she takes a gulp of bourbon and then pulls out her gun and fires, once, into the air.

The bar clears out pretty quickly, after that.

It’s a nice place. Sarah doesn’t come to London much, but when she does she knows what she likes – dark leather, whiskey. Rachel has come to this bar with her a few times; they’ve got good enough wine for Rachel’s ridiculously expensive tastes. Rachel sits down on a leather stool next to Sarah and says: “Hello, darling.” Her voice is wry with the six layers of sarcasm she needs to put on that word in order to mean it.

Sarah pushes her bourbon over. Rachel downs the dregs; Sarah watches the line of her throat as she swallows. Her mistake. Means she doesn’t see it coming when Rachel whips the glass at Sarah’s face.

She ducks in time; the glass shatters against the bar and Sarah grabs a shard through the improved glove of her leather jacket and swings it towards Rachel’s head. She draws a thin line of blood off of Rachel’s cheekbone and then Rachel hisses like a cat, drops, tries to sweep Sarah’s legs out from under her. Sarah hops on top of the barstool – Rachel goes to knock it over – Sarah has vaulted over the counter and dropped behind the bar. She blindly swings a bottle of vodka in Rachel’s general direction and then finds the wine she’s looking for, uncorks it with her teeth, pours it into a glass and puts that gently down on top of the bar. Then she ducks.

There’s a moment of silence before Rachel says: “Is that a ‘67.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Rachel says. After a second, the wine glass slithers to the other side of the bar.

“How’s your day,” Sarah says. She grabs her half-finished bottle of bourbon and hunkers down on her haunches.

“I’ve had considerably better days,” Rachel says from the other side of the bar. “Yourself?”

“Pretty shit.”

“Hence the drinking.”

“Exactly.”

“It’s slowed your reaction time.”

“Piss off, I still could’ve won.”

“Mm,” Rachel says. She doesn’t sound convinced.

Sarah takes a nice big slug of bourbon and then says: “Are we gonna talk about it.”

“Is there something in particular you’d like to talk about, Sarah?”

“Got a contract on you this morning,” Sarah says. “There. Now we’re talkin’ about it.”

She hears the scrape of the wine glass against the bar, and then the crisp sound of Rachel’s heels walking away. Christ.  “Rachel,” Sarah says. Nothing. “Bloody –  _Rachel_ ,” Sarah says.

“Yes,” Rachel says, from some distance. Sarah warily lifts up and finds that Rachel has settled on one of the couches in the back, one leg folded over the other, dress melting all the way down her body.

Sarah jumps back over the bar with her bourbon and curls up with Rachel on the couch. Rachel’s a little sweaty; she smells like one of the perfumes she keeps in her apartments, the ones that spring up like expensive mushrooms. Rachel wraps one of her arms around Sarah, idly strokes Sarah’s arm with her fingertips.

“One of us will have to ask,” Rachel says. She sighs, takes a sip of wine. “Are you planning on doing it.”

Sarah fights herself to not twitch, not shiver, not give anything away. She swallows. “Shite,” she says. “No. No I’m not.”

“They won’t be pleased with you.” Rachel’s hand hasn’t stopped its motion along Sarah’s arm, obsessively petting the leather of her sleeve.

Sarah snorts. “They never are.”

“ _Fatally_  displeased, Sarah.”

Sarah sucks in a breath. Alright. For all the marbles. “I could handle it,” she says. “If you were with me.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. Her chest rises and falls behind Sarah. Her fingers stop.

“So,” Sarah says. “Are you planning on doing it.”

Rachel’s palm splays flat against Sarah’s arm. “No,” she says, and she leans away from Sarah. Sarah hears the clink of the wine glass touching down and she is already leaning in by the time Rachel has reached over to grab Sarah’s face and kiss her.

Sarah slides her hand up Rachel’s skirt to the warm skin of Rachel’s thigh, the tips of the knives that Rachel has strapped there. Sarah gave her a few of them, but she can’t tell which ones by touch. Rachel kisses her like the bar is burning down around them and she couldn’t possibly care less. Her fingertips on Sarah’s chin are warm and easy.

“Oh,” Rachel whispers, “this is a monumentally terrible decision.”

“Eh, ‘t’s what I’m best at,” Sarah says. “Usually works out.” She pulls Rachel closer to kiss her again. She touches the very edge of her thumb to one of the knives under Rachel’s skirt, light enough that it won’t cut her.

Rachel breaks the kiss again, leans her forehead against Sarah’s. Her lips are parted; she’s panting a little bit for breath. Sarah splays her palm against Rachel’s bare leg. “We should leave,” Rachel rasps. “Now. If we’re going to run, we should run.”

“You ready?” Sarah murmurs.

Rachel nods, slightly. Her skin brushes against Sarah’s skin.

Sarah leans back regretfully, takes her fingertips off of Rachel’s knives. “Hell of a dress to go on the run in,” she says.

“Well,” Rachel says, smiling just at the edges of her mouth. “I knew that it was your favorite.”

For that, Sarah kisses Rachel again. Fast, hard. Then she leans back and grabs the neck of her bourbon bottle. Her other hand she holds out, waiting for Rachel’s hand. “Let’s go,” she says.

Rachel smiles, an unsheathing. She reaches out and takes Sarah’s hand.


	28. Musician/Manager

At this point Rachel gets a copy of the key to Sarah’s room along with the key to her own room, every time they arrive at a new hotel. It saves her time. On Sarah’s last tour she still retained enough desperate optimism to wait for Sarah at the bus; now she downs a shot of bitterly strong espresso, gets ready, and walks right into Sarah’s room without knocking. 

Sarah is passed out in bed with a woman and a man. The woman is blonde. Sarah likes blondes. Her male paramours only have one thing in common, and Rachel desperately hopes the man is clothed so Rachel doesn’t have to see if he has it too.

She shoves the curtains open, frowns at the mess of clothing on the floor. God, she hates Sarah. When the groaning starts from the bed behind her she says: “You have one minute to be out of bed, or I will pour a glass of cold water on you.”

“What’s  _happening?_ ” whines a voice that’s too high to be Sarah’s.

“It’s fine,” Sarah rasps. “She doesn’t mean it. She’s a sweetheart, aren’t you Rachel.”

“Forty-five seconds.” Rachel walks into the bathroom, finds a collection of disposable cups on the counter, fills one with ice-cold water. “Thirty.”

“That’s bullshit, it’s been five.”

“Fifteen seconds.”

A distant thumping of feet hitting the floor. “I’m up, mum,” Sarah says. Rachel looks back into the room, sees Sarah – still completely undressed – padding over to the kitchen table. “Is there tea?” Sarah says.

“No,” Rachel says. She looks back at the heap of limbs on the bed. “The two of you. Out. Now. I will call security.”

Muffled groans and the sound of fabric pulling. Rachel watches her own face in the mirror, the unfeeling unmoving lines of it. The hotel door opens, closes. Rachel exits the bathroom, still holding the water.

“Drink this,” she says, handing it to Sarah – perched on the kitchen table, now, because Sarah Manning wouldn’t understand hygiene if she got the rules of it tattooed on her ribcage. “And get dressed. You’re meant to be on a tour bus in ten minutes.”

Sarah just looks at Rachel. Rachel makes eye contact, doesn’t look lower. She doesn’t stop holding out the water.

“Did you like ‘em?” Sarah says. “What’s your taste, anyway. Men? Women? Can’t figure you out, Rach.”

“Rachel,” says Rachel. “I’ve told you this repeatedly. Take this and drink it. I was very serious when I threatened to pour it on you.”

Sarah takes the water. “You didn’t answer,” she says.

“I don’t have time for either,” Rachel says. “I am fully occupied babysitting you.”

Sarah smirks, toasts her with the cup of water, and drinks.

* * *

Sarah goes through personnel like absolutely nobody’s business. She twists her fingers into her security guards’ armor and sleeps with them, all of them, even the ones with wives, even the ones who have never been attracted to a woman before. 

Sarah usually makes sure Rachel finds them.

Mid-coitus.

She’s a one-woman act, thank goodness, but tech people – lighting – tour bus drivers – chefs – assistants – she finds what makes them tick and she uses them and she discards them.

Rachel is the only one she hasn’t managed to lose.

* * *

And now Sarah is drunk, again. Some party for some promising up-and-comer and Sarah has taken too many shots (again) and made a mess (again) that Rachel will have to clean up ( _again_ ). They’re in the backseat of the black car. Sarah has managed to maintain enough hand-eye coordination to undo her seatbelt and straddle Rachel’s lap.

 _Again_.

“Put your seatbelt on,” Rachel says.

Sarah has her mouth against Rachel’s throat, warm and wet. Rachel would pull her head off, but she’s occupied with Sarah’s hands. As in: she has them by the wrists and yanked away from where they are trying to crawl up her skirt.

“Sarah Manning,” Rachel says. “You absolute imbecile. Sit down and put your seatbelt on.”

Sarah sucks a bruise into Rachel’s neck. Rachel lets out a sound she didn’t mean to let out and then rolls Sarah off of her lap and onto the seat next to her. She slams the buckle in. “You’re behaving like a child,” she says. Her voice is shakier than she would like it to be.

“Come on,” Sarah says. Her voice is a growl and her eyes are sky-dark. “I think about you all the time. You know that. I want you so bad, Rachel–”

“I’ll remind you of this when you’re sober,” Rachel says. The car pulls up to their hotel – the back entrance, where hopefully no one will see what an utter disgrace Sarah always manages to be.

“You can,” Sarah says. “Yeah. Yeah. You should, actually. Tell me when I’m sober, Rachel.” She unbuckles her seatbelt and manages to make her clumsy way out of the car. Rachel follows her, herds her towards the elevator. They step in.

“Or,” Sarah says, stepping too close, pressing Rachel up against the mirrored wall. “Y’know. We could.”

“Drink water,” Rachel says. “I won’t take pity on your hangover in the morning.” When the elevator chimes, she steps out and leaves Sarah there.

* * *

She doesn’t bring it up. Sarah watches her through bruised eyes and nurses black coffee and neither of them bring it up.

Sarah has done it before. Sarah will do it again. It doesn’t mean anything.

* * *

On stage, Sarah is the most beautiful person in the world. This is why Rachel tries not to watch her shows – she wants to forget about it, the deep and terrifying understanding that Sarah can have for other people’s wounds. It’s easier to bear when she uses this understanding for one night stands. When Sarah sings about loneliness or fear or pain it carves its way into Rachel’s chest and leaves her reeling.

She does two slower songs a night – she sits on a stool with her guitar slung over her chest, her breath heaving, her skin shining with sweat. She leans in close to the microphone, so close her breath makes it shiver with static. She sings.

Rachel tries not to watch. On the nights she doesn’t, on the nights she stays backstage, she can hear Sarah’s voice trickling into the bones of the building and flooding each and every room up to the brim.

* * *

Three in the morning: the sound of guitar outside of Rachel’s room. Rachel wraps a robe around herself and opens the door to the sight of Sarah, sitting on the floor of the hallway, wearing a black sports bra and the dark jeans Rachel thinks she’s been wearing for the last three days.

“Hey,” Sarah says. She doesn’t look up from the guitar.

“I am far too exhausted for this,” Rachel says. “Sarah. I know that honesty is repellant to you, but just this once. Please. I’m very tired. Will you leave me be.”

“Can’t,” Sarah says. “Gotta get this song down ‘fore it goes. You should be glad, yeah? I’m your bloody cash cow. What’re you gonna do if I don’t get another album out.”

“Sleep,” Rachel says.

“You know what I think?” Sarah says.

“If you did, you would have returned to your room by now.”

“I think you’d be bored without me,” Sarah says. “I think you wouldn’t have anything.”

Rachel lets out a soft, slow breath.

“The bus leaves at eight a.m. tomorrow,” she says. She closes her hotel room door. She pretends that the sound of Sarah’s guitar doesn’t drift under the door, like smoke.

* * *

Fine. She thinks about it. Rachel is a lesbian, and Sarah is the only person she’s seen undressed since this tour started. Sarah’s weight in her lap, the fanged edges of Sarah’s grin, the sound of Sarah’s voice snarling its way through a song about  _fucking_ , the way that Sarah keeps pushing–

But Sarah wants Rachel to be a challenge. Rachel is exciting because she is a challenge. Rachel is a game that Sarah is playing.

Rachel doesn’t want to lose.

* * *

“Five more stops,” Sarah says. She picks up a ragged piece of fabric that could charitably be called a shirt, slings it over her bare back and shoulders. (No bra.) She starts lackadaisically throwing things into her suitcase. Rachel nurses a cup of tea at the table of the latest glittering suite that’s been wasted on Sarah.

“I assume this is building to something,” she says. “Unless you were looking to inform me that you finally understand your tour schedule. Congratulations.”

“Where do you go?” Sarah says. “The rest of the year. When we’re not doing – interviews, and shite. Bloody press shit. Where are you?”

“I sleep,” Rachel says, “for months. I am never interrupted. Nothing in my apartment has ever once caught fire. It’s blissful.”

“Oi, that was one time.”

“Four.”

“Shit. Really?” Sarah shakes her head, paces across the room to pick up a lacy pink bra that probably isn’t hers. She eyes Rachel and throws it into her suitcase. It would be nice if Sarah put on pants, but since Sarah is a petulant child Rachel can’t tell her this or Sarah will go out to the tourbus in her underwear.

“Not the point,” Sarah says. “What do you do?”

“I don’t believe that’s your concern.”

“You should come over,” Sarah says. “Sometime. I throw the best bloody parties, bet you’ve heard. They’re no fun without you, yeah? Who’m’I meant to get drunk on when you’re not there.”

“I imagine there’s no shortage of willing volunteers.”

“ _Rachel_ ,” Sarah says. For one of the very first times in their entire career together, her voice is raw with an actual feeling. It’s uncomfortable.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. She takes a drink of tea.

“You’re impossible,” Sarah says. “You know that?” She is standing very still. Her eyes are very dark. “You’re the most impossible person I’ve ever met.”

“Likewise,” Rachel says. It comes out very quiet. That wasn’t how she’d meant it at all. She takes another sip of tea.

* * *

“This one’s for you,” Sarah murmurs to the microphone. “You know who you are.” 

The entire audience screams, one enormous frantic animal.

* * *

The last stop. Sarah is decked out in leather and dark fabric and black makeup that turns her face into something savage and unholy. She is touching her fingers, lightly, to the strings of her guitar. Out there the audience is chanting her name, over and over. They are always chanting her name.

Rachel doesn’t need to be there. Sarah is a wreck, but never at her shows; the music is the only thing she loves in the world, it’s the only thing.

Rachel is there anyways.

“Last show,” Sarah says.

“If you fall off the stage I will immediately turn in my resignation.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Sarah says, grinning. “You’d sit by my hospital bed checkin’ email and bein’ pissed at me.”

“Well,” Rachel says. “Best we don’t find out.”

Sarah strums the bridge of one of her later songs, the one about fire. “I’m almost done with the next album,” she says. “Writing it, I mean.”

There isn’t a good word to say, so Rachel settles for: “Alright.”

_Sa-rah, Sa-rah, Sa-rah._

“You should let me play it for you,” Sarah says. “‘fore I record.”

“Alright,” Rachel says, a second time.

A smile twists up the corner of Sarah’s mouth. “Alright,” she echoes, and then shakes her hair out of her face and charges onto the stage.

* * *

Three in the morning: the sound of guitar outside of Rachel’s apartment. Rachel wraps a robe around herself and opens the door to the sight of Sarah, leaning against the wall, wearing a leather jacket and combat boots and a tangle of sidebraids in her hair.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hello, Sarah,” Rachel says, and lets her in.


	29. Roommates (NSFW)

Rachel Duncan is a heinous, unforgivable bitch who eats Sarah’s leftovers and pretends that she doesn’t and who has never washed a plate in the months they’ve been forced together in this apartment. When Sarah has friends over, Rachel threatens to call the superintendent. When Sarah plays music without headphones, Rachel threatens to call the superintendent. Rachel  _has_  called the superintendent, and Sarah only managed to keep her place in this building by the skin of her teeth.

There are more points on this list, but Rachel has gotten up from bed and Sarah’s forgotten the rest of them. Rachel is bending over by the bed, finding her shirt on the floor and picking it up, and the line of her naked back is like a statue in some gallery Sarah would never be allowed entry into. She’s got livid red scratch marks down the curve of her spine from Sarah’s fingernails. If Rachel dropped her shirt and crawled back into bed Sarah would kiss her, immediately, and it would be really fucking good.

But this was the last time.

Seriously.

She isn’t doing this again.

“This was the last time,” Sarah says.

“Mm,” Rachel says, sounding completely bored by the general concept of Sarah as a person. “I’m using the shower. Alone.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says, “I don’t want to  _shower_  with you, Christ. Did you hear me?”

“This was the last time,” Rachel says. She pulls her shirt on, leaves it unbuttoned. There’s a livid bitemark darkening above her collarbone. “A regrettable loss. Are you done talking?”

“That’s it?”

“Well,” Rachel says, “if you say it’s over I wouldn’t dare to disagree with you.” She walks around the bed, towards the direction of the shower. “I do hope you will have vacated my bed by the time I’ve finished.”

Oh. That’s it. They’re done with – whatever this was, that thing where they fucked each other every time they couldn’t stand each other and it was always weirdly, deliriously good. So that’s over. Probably for the best.

“Wait,” Sarah says, because she’s an idiot. She stumbles out of Rachel’s bed, hisses as the pain stings. “That’s it? You’re just gonna shower and we’re gonna go back to hating each other?”

“…yes,” Rachel says.

Sarah circles around her – and Rachel’s breathing hitches, just a little bit. Her eyes are wide and dark. She looks like a porcelain doll and fucks like a caged tornado and Sarah figured that out the first time and then told herself there wasn’t a first time, there was only the  _one_  time–

Oh, Christ, she’s kissing Rachel. She has her hands under Rachel’s shirt and is digging her nails into the soft skin above Rachel’s hipbones and Rachel has her thigh between Sarah’s legs and she’s biting Sarah’s lip and oh fuck Rachel Duncan is a heinous, unforgivable bitch who – is really just – “ _Shite_ ,” Sarah hisses, and pulls Rachel back to the bed.

Rachel lands on top of Sarah’s hips and straddles her, smirking that same shitty smirk she  _always_  wears. Rachel Duncan is a heinous, unforgivable bitch who eats Sarah’s leftovers and pretends that she doesn’t and is dragging her fingernails with unbearable tenderness down Sarah’s neck, between her breasts, down her stomach. She’s the very worst person Sarah has ever met; Sarah is flipping them, her hands pinning Rachel’s wrists to the bed, Rachel’s smirk going incandescent and pleased.

“Stop smiling,” Sarah growls, and kisses her. 

Rachel arches up against Sarah’s grip when Sarah leans in; when she can’t break out she lets out this high whine of pleasure and goes limp. Sarah kisses that sound out of Rachel’s wet eager mouth and then she kisses Rachel’s throat and then she bites it and then she bites it and she’s thinking of Rachel’s face every time Sarah comes in from the rain – the flat mask of disgust and disdain and boredom – and then she looks up to the flushed panting mess of Rachel’s face now and god it feels good. God it just feels so fucking good.

“Don’t move your hands,” she says, and she lifts her hands off Rachel’s wrists; Rachel grabs onto the sheets, twists them in her fingers and doesn’t move. She just stays there, perfectly still and lit up and trembling, and Sarah touches her: the worst fucking roommate she has ever had. Her worst and favorite roommate – the way Rachel’s biting her lower lip – the soft sounds – she thinks rock music is garbage and she pours Sarah’s bourbon down the sink and when Sarah buries her mouth between Rachel’s legs she has to slip a hand between her own legs and fuck herself to the way Rachel is whining her name.

Sarah comes first, which is embarrassing. Rachel breaks Sarah’s name into four or five shaky, growling syllables and spits them all out when she comes. She goes limp. Her breathing is fast and Sarah rests her face against Rachel’s thigh and tastes the hot salt of her. She feels loose and very warm.

Through half-lidded eyes, Sarah watches Rachel lift her hands and brush the short blonde curtain of hair out of her face. She touches her tongue to her lips. She looks wide-eyed and startled, like orgasming is some big surprise. Sarah licks her tongue around her teeth and then Rachel closes her eyes for a second and she’s Rachel Duncan again, and Sarah hates her.

“Move,” Rachel says. “You’re going to make my leg fall asleep.”

Sarah doesn’t move. She lifts a hand and lazily flips Rachel off.

In a hilarious, awkward wriggle, Rachel pulls herself out from underneath Sarah. She sits up on the edge of the bed, catches her breath. Sarah watches Rachel’s shoulders rise and fall. 

Rachel Duncan is a heinous, unforgivable bitch who eats Sarah’s leftovers and pretends that she doesn’t and who has never washed a plate in the months they’ve been forced together in this apartment. She’s standing up from the bed and eyeing Sarah. She says: “Coming?”

When Sarah has friends over, Rachel threatens to call the superintendent. When Sarah plays music without headphones, Rachel threatens to call the superintendent. Rachel  _has_  called the superintendent–

“Yeah,” Sarah says, resignedly. “Yeah, I’m coming.” She gets up from the bed and heads to the shower.


	30. High school party (NSFW)

Rachel doesn’t like parties, or drinking to excess, or most people her own age, but when she’d heard Sarah Manning was coming to this party she’d stooped low enough to follow. So far, it hasn’t been worth it. The alcohol is unreal formaldehyde colors, all drugstore quality – one of these bottles may actually be mouthwash – the music is a screeching headache, and three boys have tried to get Rachel to go upstairs with them.

The girl Rachel has had a crush on for two and a half years is mostly just a flash of leather jacket across the room; occasionally she laughs, a lightning-flash of white teeth. A fourth boy tries to talk to Rachel. She shoves her red plastic cup into his hand without looking, winds her way across the party to Sarah.

The crush is an embarrassment. She acknowledges that. Her parents would be ashamed if they knew the things Rachel imagines Sarah doing with her calloused hands; they’d disown her, most likely. Sarah would laugh, which is one of the reasons that Rachel likes her. Another reason is her neck – in that Rachel would like to bite it.

From the middle of the crowd she can hear the winding end of Sarah’s anecdote, something about a bar in town and a poorly-modified ID and a college boy and his girlfriend and thin white lines on a bar counter. Unbelievable, like a fairy story. Rachel takes a seat on a couch – close enough to hear but not close enough for Sarah to notice her and do…something. Whatever it is a person like Sarah Manning would do.

Sarah is sitting on an ottoman, a crowd amassing around her, telling the story with slashes of her hands through the open air and a mouth that switches from grin to growl to grimace. Mostly Rachel just wants Sarah to touch her. She’s been thinking about it for a long time, all the ways Sarah could pin her up against a wall. She’s thinking about it now; too much to drink, not enough, doesn’t matter. Sarah is wearing ragged jean shorts and where her leg is slung up on the coffee table there’s just enough thigh bared to–

“Hey,” says one of Sarah’s sycophants, “we should play Truth or Dare.”

“It’s boring!” Sarah says, a surprised burst of laughter. “Come on, Cos, we already know too much shit about each other and there’s nothing you can bloody dare me to do, yeah?”

The girl with the glasses, sitting next to Sarah, turns and looks at another girl. “Delphine,” she says, “come on, you want to play Truth or Dare, right?”

Delphine shrugs, bites her lip, murmurs something inaudible. Sarah rolls her eyes. “Fine,” she says.

The crowd shifts into a loose circle, and Rachel slips into it for – reasons, stupid reasons, terrible reasons. She folds her legs under her and sits on the ground. Next to her is yet another miserable boy; he tries to talk to her, but she looks in his general direction and his mouth slaps shut with an audible sound.

“Sarah,” says Sarah’s friend. “Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.” Sarah already looks bored; she’s lazing on the ottoman, staring around the circle with eyes ringed in a thick charcoal haze of eyeshadow. She looks at Rachel for a moment, narrows her eyes curiously, looks away again.

“Seven Minutes in Heaven wiiiith–”

“Christ, Cosima, we’ve been to enough parties, feels like I’ve already shagged everyone h–”

“Rachel,” says Cosima.

Oh.

Well.

She is certainly pointing at Rachel, so she must have said Rachel’s name. Rachel bites down with sharp scissor-teeth on the inside of her lip and tries desperately not to let her face move or – heaven forbid – flush.

“Hi,” says Cosima. “You haven’t kissed Sarah, right?”

Rachel manages to say “You’re correct.” Somehow, it doesn’t sound as wrecked as she feels by the concept.

“Stop bein’ a tit,” Sarah says, leaning over to shove Cosima with her shoulder. “I’m not gonna  _make_  her–”

“Oh, Sarah,” Rachel says, “what about your perfect success rate?”

Laughter from around the circle; Rachel raises her eyebrows at Sarah, cool and detached like her heart isn’t ramming itself in giddy terror up against her ribs.

“Fine,” Sarah says, laughing hard enough to show all of her teeth. “Fine! Shit, Duncan. Alright.” She stands up off the ottoman, rakes her hands through her hair and points to Cosima. “You’re getting dared to  _shit_  once I get back, yeah?”

“Seven minutes!” Cosima says, laughing. “I’m timing it.”

Sarah rolls her eyes, exits the circle. After a moment Rachel realizes – oh – oh – she has to follow her. She stands up, pretends and pretends and makes her way after Sarah towards an empty hallway. Sarah is leaning against the wall by a closet, frowning at nothing. When she sees Rachel coming she gestures towards the closet, grandly. “After you,” she says.

Rachel steps into the closet. Sarah follows. The door shuts. Sarah is very close. The inside of this closet smells like old sachets and boy’s deodorant and skin. Rachel swallows, flexes her fingers, stands very very still.

Sarah exhales. “I’m sorry,” she says, sounding miserable. “Cosima’s a twat. We don’t to do anything you don’t want to do, yeah?”

“I understand,” Rachel says, and kisses her.

Every muscle in her body locks itself up with two and a half years of desperate wanting – except her mouth, which is pressed to Sarah’s. She has to remember everything about this moment, because there won’t be any replication: the warm dry press of Sarah’s mouth against hers, the claustrophobic warmth of the closet, the muffled sounds of music from outside. This is it. She holds it for one – two – three seconds more, and then lets Sarah go.

“Oh,” Sarah says in the dark. “Really?”

“I’m a lesbian,” Rachel says for the very first time. The words are quieter than she’d like them to be.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sarah sighs, sounding giddy with it, and–

–god help both of them–

–she presses Rachel up against a wall and kisses her. Her hands settle on Rachel’s hips; Rachel’s entire body lights up, alive with feeling. She tangles her hands in the endless mane of Sarah’s hair, scratches her fingernails against Sarah’s scalp, tilts her mouth to make the kiss deeper and wetter and calamitous. She’d kissed a few girls at boarding school, before the transfer, but that always felt like an exploratory game – this feels real, violent. She bites Sarah’s lips and Sarah makes a sound that’s either a chuckle or a growl. (Either.) (Both.) Sarah’s fingernails scratch down the tight fabric of Rachel’s skirt and her hands perch like predatory birds on Rachel’s bare thighs.

“Good?” she breathes against Rachel’s mouth. 

“Yes,” Rachel breathes back; it takes everything not to make it a whine. She says it again, a soft sound: “ _Yes_.”

Sarah slides her hands up Rachel’s skirt and Rachel’s brain whirls itself into dizzy oblivion. She breaks the kiss so she can lean forward and bite Sarah’s neck.

“She bites,” Sarah says, voice edged with hysteria. Rachel bites again and Sarah makes a sound without consonants, touches her fingertips to the lace edge of Rachel’s underwear, says: “Good?”

“We have less than seven minutes,” Rachel rasps against Sarah’s throat. “Stop wasting time.” She licks Sarah’s jugular and sinks her teeth into it again and Sarah says “Alright, shit,” and shifts her hand and her fingers – oh – Rachel whines, buries her face into the fabric of Sarah’s leather jacket and leaves it there. She can feel her hips rocking against the press of Sarah’s fingers, Sarah panting  _yeah, yeah, just like that, you’re so good_  and pressing Rachel up against the wall.

Rachel scrabbles for purchase and digs claws into the back of Sarah’s jacket, clings to Sarah as Sarah takes her apart. Every moment of this moment is so loud that she can’t even think through it; she feels too much, it’s all too much, she’ll never be able to hold it. She’s thought of this – too many times – and yet the reality of it is entirely too much to bear. She hasn’t stopped making the same keening whine since Sarah sunk fingers inside of her. She thinks she may not ever stop.

“Come on,” Sarah breathes, “come on, can you come for me?” and Rachel would have done it anyways but Sarah is asking her, Sarah, and she falls utterly apart. Messy on Sarah’s hand, shaking and gasping. She buries her face against Sarah’s shoulder again and gulps for breath, feels afterglow clanging like cymbals in her skull. She listens to the obscene sound of Sarah pulling her hand free, sucking her fingers clean.

“You alright?” Sarah says, after a time.

“Never tell anyone,” Rachel says. “Never – don’t tell them.”

If anyone else had a part of this she would lose her mind – none of them deserve it, out there, the things Sarah whispered when she took Rachel apart with one hand and the fingernail marks Rachel is leaving in Sarah’s leather jacket, they’re Rachel’s, no one else deserves them.

“I won’t,” Sarah says. She splays her hands over Rachel’s hips again. Rachel lifts her head, pulls Sarah’s head towards hers, opens her mouth against Sarah’s mouth and kisses her. Sarah hums an agonized note and presses her body against Rachel’s, strokes the curve of Rachel’s hips, kisses her like she’s drowning or dying or falling apart.

She stops. She pants breaths against Rachel’s mouth. She says: “Time’s almost up.”

“Is there time…” Rachel says, trailing off and sliding a palm up the endless hot expanse of Sarah’s bare thigh. Sarah groans.

“Can I–” she says, and “will you–” and “Christ, Duncan, you wanna get out of here?”

Rachel’s brain and heart shudder into fireworks. She holds her body very still, her fingertips poised at the fray-flutter of Sarah’s shorts. “Do you have a place in mind,” she says.

“Yeah.”

Rachel can feel Sarah’s heartbeat pounding, and she wants to laugh at how it’s almost as fast as hers. None of this is real. She could laugh at any of it.

“Well, then,” she whispers, “let’s get out of here.”

Sarah bumps her forehead against Rachel’s, leans back, fumbles for Rachel’s hand and pulls her forward as she opens the closet door. Rachel tugs her skirt down, one-handed and clumsy, and follows.

“Shh,” Sarah breathes, leading Rachel towards the back door – away from the clamor of the party, still churning ceaselessly to itself. Rachel squeezes Sarah’s hand. She follows.


	31. Monster

_You’re going to have to give up at some point_ , says the monster. Lately it’s taken to lurking in mirrors – this thing with its face a flattened version of a human face, its eyes like a bird’s in its sunken sockets. Blonde hair, which is maybe the most terrifying: the idea that it’s got a normal haircut. Just a bob. The skin like tiny white feathers and the crimson mouth and the sharp teeth and then the fucking – normal haircut, it scares the shit out of her.

“Shut up,” Sarah says, and keeps burning feathers and letting them drop into the toilet. The monster sighs at her from the mirror, splays its palms against the glass. (Its fingers are webbed, slightly. Sarah wishes she didn’t know that.)

 _Sarah_ , sighs the monster.  _I’m starving_.

“Order a pizza,” Sarah says. She flushes the toilet. She leaves the bathroom, the monster scratching and scratching at the other side of the glass.

* * *

If it had come out from under the bed, Sarah at least could have laughed a bit. But no: Kira came crawling into Sarah’s bed in the middle of the night, saying that her mirror was whispering to her. When Sarah came into the room–

 

 

She took the mirror down from Kira’s wall, but if it doesn’t show up in mirrors it finds windows so Sarah’s letting it keep the bathroom mirror for now. She’s moved Kira’s bed to the basement, the only room in the house with no glass. The monster scratches away, patient and persistent.  _Sarah did you know your daughter is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen? Sarah she’s so lovely. Sarah on the other side of the glass no children are ever sad. Sarah don’t you want to do better for her? Don’t you want better for her than this?_

Which is all well and good, but the monster has teeth on its tongue and lining the inside of its mouth and there is no way in  _hell_  Sarah is letting her daughter climb through the glass to Wonderland as told by someone with a fear of dentists. She throws out the swan feathers that come drifting through the mirror like snow. She makes Kira sandwiches, sends Kira off to school. She looks at real estate listings – even though she can’t figure out if the monster is haunting the house or haunting Sarah herself. It scratches and scratches at the windows, but the windows never bleed and Sarah never lets it in.

* * *

“Move,” she says, when she’s putting on eyeliner. The monster is all the way up against the glass, so close that Sarah can see its pupils twitching larger when she speaks.

 _You’re the only one who’s ever lasted this long_ , it says.  _People have tried to fight me. They’ve shattered the glass, they’ve burned their houses to the ground. Some of them have begged. Eventually, I’ve always won. What makes you special, Sarah? What makes you different?_

“Christ,” Sarah says, “I’m just tryin’ to get my bloody eyeliner even. Will you leave me alone?”

The monster tilts its head to the side, too far, farther than a human head could tilt on a human neck. It says:  _it’s already even. You look lovely._

* * *

Sometimes, Sarah can hear it singing. It sounds like someone playing a violin made of glass.

* * *

She should sleep in the basement, with Kira. She should stay away from windows; she doesn’t. At night Sarah feigns sleep and feels the monster’s gaze like cold fingers pressed to the back of her neck. It doesn’t talk to her when she’s asleep – it just sings sometimes, that high thin song. It moves to windows downstairs, to the bathroom mirror, it walks in circles. It always comes back to the window in Sarah’s bedroom. She listens to the sound of its fingerprints rustling against the glass.

It’s always there in the morning, when she wakes up.  _Sarah, I’m starving_ , but it doesn’t look starving. It just looks like it’s waiting for something. Following Sarah to the bathroom and down the stairs and to the front door, where Kira gives it a bit of a wave before she goes off to school. Then it’s just the two of them. Sarah’s looking for work, but she can’t find it – couldn’t find it even before all this shit. She stays at home and circles anything in the newspaper that says HELP WANTED. She slashes her pen around the word HELP.

 _On the other side of the glass no one ever works,_ says the monster.  _There are islands made of memory, and when the children dream you can pluck the dreams from their heads and eat them like fresh fruit._

“Thought you were starving,” Sarah says.

 _Well,_ says the monster.  _No one has come through in a very long time._

* * *

“What’s your name,” Sarah says.

The monster scratches featherlets off of its skin and blows them through the windowglass, where they turn full-sized and float down to the floor.  _No one’s ever asked me that before_ , it says.  _You do continue to surprise me, Sarah_.

“Lucky me.”

 _Call me what you like_ , says the monster.  _Leda. Lir_. It presses its palms against the glass and watches the feathers drift to Sarah’s side with a child’s fascination.

Sarah taps her pen against a paragraph of contact info in the newspaper. “Rachel,” she says. Hard to be scared of something with a name like that.

 _How mundane_ , says the monster. She laughs.

* * *

Rachel has never heard rock music, or watched television. She can’t move to the TV screen and it frustrates her; it frustrates her more when Sarah laughs.  _I don’t get it_ , she says from the full-length mirror Sarah dragged out of the attic. She leans against the glass, fingers kneading at it, nails screeching. She watches some shitty sitcom on Sarah’s shitty TV. She says:  _Why are they laughing_.

“It’s funny,” Sarah says.

_Why?_

“‘cause we need something to laugh about,” Sarah says.

 _Ah_ , Rachel says. She sits cross-legged on her ground and doesn’t say anything else.

* * *

 _You could come with me_ , Rachel says.

“Thought you were over that shit.”

 _I can’t cross over to your side_ , Rachel says.  _I would be a bird, or a handful of teeth. You could come over here. You would be beautiful. I think you’d have fur. I think you’d have teeth like broken crowns_.

Sarah shakes her head. She keeps running a brush through her hair, watching Rachel instead of her own reflection. 

 _There are rivers here,_ Rachel says.  _There are skies like you can’t imagine. I could show them to you. I lied, when I said children are happy here. They aren’t really. But you and I, we could keep Kira safe. Together. We wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. She could see the constellations made of bones. She could cook her own dreams and eat them._

Sarah shakes her head again. “I’m not falling for it,” she says. Her voice is a rasp.

 _I would catch you_ , Rachel says. She leans her forehead against the glass. Her eyes watch Sarah, dark like oceans.

* * *

Kira is asleep in the basement, wrapped in her pink duvet, face open and sweet. Sarah sits on the stairs and watches her. What would Kira’s dreams taste like? Plums, maybe. Honey.

She climbs the stairs. In the small square mirror by the front door Rachel is waiting for her, a swan with all its bones broken, a dream Sarah can’t remember if she’s already woken up from.

She touches her fingertips to the glass, above Rachel’s face. She pushes through. When she presses her palm to Rachel’s face, Rachel’s eyelids flutter closed and she sighs. Her feathers bristle against Sarah’s skin.


	32. Reunited childhood friends

The front door of Rachel’s parent’s house creaks open; she hears footsteps on the floorboards. She doesn’t turn around to see who’s walked in, just keeps sorting through old mementos. Mostly they go in the box marked “Throw Away.” When she says “mostly,” she means nearly everything. Old video tapes. Her mother’s journals. Throw away, throw away.

“Rachel,” says Sarah, and Rachel’s hands startle and drop a well-worn novel into the box marked “Keep.” By accident. She closes her eyes, gives into it, turns around.

Sarah is leaning up against the doorframe. She didn’t look at all how Rachel expected her to look – in her mind Sarah was still ten years old, just a little taller than Rachel, hair tangled, laugh contagious. She was right about the hair, but otherwise Sarah is all ragged fabric and smeared makeup. Her eyeliner is days old. There’s a hole in the bottom of her sweater. Rachel wanted her to be ten, and just a little taller than Rachel, and brave enough to survive this.

“Sarah,” she says. “You didn’t have to come.” She pulls the book out of the “Keep” box and moves it to “Throw Away.”

“What’d you mean I didn’t have to come,” Sarah says, stepping further into the living room of Rachel’s parent’s house. “Christ, Rachel. I practically lived at your house, you know that. ‘course I was gonna come.”

“I have it handled.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sarah says, and she steps forward and hugs Rachel. Rachel doesn’t understand why she’s doing that; she lets Sarah do it anyways. She stares at the painting of flowers on the wall behind Sarah, which her mother had loathed and her father had treasured.

She folds her arms around Sarah and holds her. She can’t let herself think about how much she’d missed Sarah, or she’ll start crying. She refuses to start crying. After five seconds (she counts) she lets Sarah go; Sarah steps back. Her eyes are wet. She rubs the back of her hand under them and sniffs. “Shit,” she mutters. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Rachel says, and turns back to the boxes. “I’m nearly done. If you could empty out my – the closets, I’d appreciate the help. There’s a box of garbage bags by the front door.”

“You’re not throwing all of it out,” Sarah says. After Rachel doesn’t answer, she claps her hand on Rachel’s shoulder and says: “Hey. Rachel. Maybe you shouldn’t be doing all of this now, yeah?”

“If not now,  _when_ ,” Rachel says – oh, snarls. Oh, she’s snarling. She has spun around and she is snarling at Sarah. “It has to be done. I only have the week to spare before I travel to London for my three separate scheduled conferences. Will you help me throw it all away or not.”

In front of her, Sarah has shifted to her back foot. She looks like a wild hare staring at a bear trap. She wasn’t ever frightened of anything, before. Rachel thought she was completely incapable of fear. She would have followed Sarah anywhere. It feels wrong, to make her frightened – it feels like it shouldn’t be possible.

She can’t take it back, though. So she turns back to the boxes. Why did her parents own so many damn books. She doesn’t need Darwin, or Bulfinch, or Moreau. Throw them all away. Make them disappear, make them gone.

Sarah grabs Rachel’s hands. “Let go of me,” Rachel says, and Sarah is pulling her, and she really would have followed Sarah anywhere. That’s the problem of Sarah – it was always easiest to follow her, into other people’s houses and into abandoned buildings and down to the river with Sarah’s heartbeat thudding steady and sure against Rachel’s palm.

So, she follows. Sarah shoves Rachel into a chair in her own–

in her parents’ breakfastnook, and then goes banging around the cupboards. She doesn’t know that Rachel already emptied the kitchen. The cupboards are barren. Nothing is left. She isn’t going to cry, she won’t.

Eventually Sarah sighs, drops down in the chair across from Rachel. “Hey,” she says. “We’re stopping for a second, ‘cause otherwise I think you’re gonna start throwing shit.”

“Why are you here, Sarah,” Rachel says. She sounds exhausted, even to herself.

“‘cause you called me,” Sarah says, like it’s that easy. Maybe it is. It shouldn’t be. Rachel really isn’t going to cry; there’s too much to do and she won’t.

“If you’d called me,” Rachel says. “If Siobhan had died. I wouldn’t have come.”

“Bullshit,” Sarah says, and Rachel is crying. She hasn’t cried in eighteen years but she’s crying now. She has her arms folded on the table and her head resting on them and her parents are dead and she’s crying.

“Shit,” Sarah breathes. Her hand is on Rachel’s back now. It’s warm. Sarah is kneeling down next to Rachel’s chair, hand on Rachel’s back, doing a terrible and panicked  _shh-shh-shhhh_. 

“I’m here,” Sarah says. “Alright? You ‘n me, we’re gonna sort this out. Everything’s gonna be fine, Rachel.”

Rachel laughs, a wet hysterical sound. “No it’s not,” Sarah amends. “It’s gonna be right shit. But you’re gonna make it through. Yeah?”

“What happened to you,” Rachel says, voice small and soaked through with tears. She sits up, sniffles. She should shake Sarah’s hand off her back; she doesn’t. Mostly because she feels approximately ten years old, and that means she trusts the warmth of Sarah’s hand.

“What?” Sarah says. Her brow is furrowed. Rachel wants to reach out and press the pad of her thumb to the wrinkles; she wants to drag Sarah out of this woman who’s hiding her from Rachel. She doesn’t know what she wants. Sarah is looking at her like Rachel is a puzzle she desperately wants to solve but doesn’t have all the pieces to and Rachel hates it and she doesn’t know how to fix it, what pieces to give Sarah to let her put Rachel together.

“We never wrote,” Rachel says. “Afterwards.” She clears her throat. “You’ve changed.”

“ _I’ve_ changed,” Sarah says. “Christ, Rachel. You’re blonde now.” She shakes her head. “I, uh.” She runs a hand through her hair, sighs through her teeth. “Dunno. Fell in with a rough crowd after you – I liked ‘em, they liked me, we liked a lot of really terrible shit. Took me a while to claw my way out of it, I guess.” She folds the cuff of her sweater over her hand, gnaws on her bottom lip a bit. “Wanted to write you,” she says. “Or send you a bloody email or somethin’. But I, uh. Didn’t think you’d want to hear from me. So.”

“I wanted to hear from you.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “Christ. I’m sorry, Rachel.” Her hand is on Rachel’s back, still, until it’s gone – until Sarah lifts it and folds her hands around Rachel’s hands. “You know I’m sorry?”

Rachel shakes her head. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” she says. “I’m the one who left for boarding school. And then summer programs, and university, and the first job, and the second…I couldn’t imagine turning back for you. I thought it would – undo me.” Despite herself her thumb is rubbing over the knuckle of Sarah’s thumb. “I think,” she says, “that you were the only real friend I’ve ever had. I’m sorry. That it took – this.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Sarah says, voice rough and low. She clears her throat, stares at their hands. “I’m just glad you’re back.”

“Do you remember,” Rachel says, “the night before I left, when we–”

“Out by the river,” Sarah says roughly. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t kiss anyone else until I turned eighteen years old,” Rachel says. “I was terrified it would erase you. I should have realized it. I should have realized it then, how much I missed you.”

“God,” Sarah breathes, and she leans up into a crouch and puts her mouth to Rachel’s. It’s the same as it was last time, really: Sarah’s mouth is soft, and everything tastes like Rachel’s tears.  _You’ll come back_ , Sarah had said.  _Yes,_ Rachel had said, and above them all the fireflies and Rachel’s hair in a long dark braid over her shoulder and Sarah’s hands and Sarah’s mouth and–

Rachel lets go of Sarah’s hands so she can tangle her fingers into Sarah’s hair. Sarah’s hands settle on Rachel’s knees, a warm and tangible anchor. Rachel has spent her entire life missing Sarah. The realization keeps washing over her, like waves. She grabs onto Sarah like she’ll never have to let go.

Sarah stops kissing her very slowly, mouth just a few scant millimeters away from Rachel’s mouth. Rachel is still holding her too tightly. She says: “Sarah? I don’t think I can do this alone.”

“You don’t have to,” Sarah says. “Promise.”

“I missed you,” Rachel says. It comes out heavy and painful and real.

“I missed you too,” Sarah says, and kisses her again.


	33. Werewolves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sort of insulting to my brand that it took me this long to get to werewolves, huh.

There’s a way these things are done: in a back alley, in an empty warehouse, in a stretch of forest. But the uptown pack pretends they play by different rules – Cos says they’ve got a pedigree, ‘cause Cos thinks she’s hilarious. Whatever the reason, pedigree or pretentiousness, it means Sarah had to borrow a suit from Tony and brush her out her hair ‘til it shined like a glossy brown pelt and show up at this five-star restaurant to meet the uptown pack leader in person. 

The place is completely empty –almost. At one table, dressed with a snow-white tablecloth, the uptown pack leader is sitting and checking her phone. She has short blonde hair and a tight white dress and red lipstick. Her nail polish is silver. Hilarious.

She smells like flowers and amber, and underneath that: fur, meat. You can’t hide the wolf. You can smother it in skyscrapers and good tailoring but you can’t hide it, not forever.

“What’s on the menu,” Sarah says, pulling up the other chair. “I’m starved.”

“You’re late,” says the wolf. Her eyes flick up to Sarah’s: gold. They scan the black suit that’s hanging a little bit off Sarah’s frame. They lower again to her phone screen.

“I’m not,” Sarah says.

“It’s 7:03.”

“You wanna strip my hide or you wanna talk business.”

She puts down her phone, holds out a silver hand. “Rachel Duncan.”

Sarah clasps it. The hand is rough – the first thing about this bitch she’s approved of. “Sarah.”

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “You’ve encroached on our territory.”

A waiter swoops in, blank-faced, human. He pours them both wine. Rachel takes a sip of hers without taking her eyes off of Sarah. 

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “like you were even using it.” Fuck. She’d meant to go for diplomacy, at least a little bit. Cosima had told her to try diplomacy – a new language for a new way of talking, for a new pack with new rules. If this was honest Sarah would have teeth in Rachel by now. But apparently they don’t like honesty, uptown.

“It was our mess to clean.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “it was. So why didn’t you?”

Rachel’s eyelids lower. “I meant the corpse. Not the man.”

“The man was your problem,” Sarah says tightly. “He was a piece of shit. Deserved what he got. If you’re not keepin’ your territory clean, that’s not our problem.”

Rachel’s eyes are very gold, and her pupils are narrow. “It’s our territory,” she says. “We decide our definition of clean.”

“Well maybe it shouldn’t be your territory,” Sarah says, and the waiter comes back. He puts down two clean white plates with two cuts of meat, raw enough to bleed a little bit onto the china.

“That will be all, Richard,” Rachel says, without looking away from Sarah. “Go home. You’ll be notified when you should come and lock up.”

He murmurs something and glides away; Sarah smells him leave the building. Just the two of them left. With the meat here, the scent is something like honest. God if Rachel just gave Sarah an  _inch_ –

Instead, Rachel lifts her knife and fork. She cuts into her meat, precisely, carefully. Her hands are white-knuckled. They’re still the only thing about her Sarah likes.

“That isn’t your decision to make,” Rachel says, and lifts a piece of meat to her mouth, and chews. Blood stains her teeth for a moment before she swallows. “If your… _pack_ …tries that presumption a second time, I’m afraid we’ll be forced to–”

“What,” Sarah says. “Forced to what.”

“Retaliate,” Rachel says. Her voice is light around the word. She eats another bite of meat.

Sarah laughs. It feels good. It’s a loud open sound, almost like a howl. The wolf hums in her. The first time she’d changed she’d laughed through it, every second of the pain; it felt like all the highs she’d ever tried to get. The wolf slipped into her easy, like it was always meant to be there. Now it sings harmony with her own anger and god and god it just feels good.

“You’re lap dogs,” Sarah says. “You’re nothing. You’ve got uptown ‘cause we don’t want a gold bloody collar on our necks, and that’s  _it_. Don’t pretend like we wouldn’t rip you to shreds,  _Rachel_.”

“Maybe someone should,” Rachel says – under her breath, soft, like she didn’t mean to say it.

“Rip me up?” Sarah says. “Yeah, Rachel, go for it. People’ve tried.”

“No,” Rachel breathes. “Maybe someone should collar you.”

Sarah goes shock-still. The air smells like blood and wolf; Rachel lowers her knife and fork in two small precise gestures that ring through the silent restaurant like swords clashing. 

“Say again,” Sarah says. The hair on her arms stands up.

“Maybe,” Rachel says conversationally, “you should be a good dog and  _heel._ ”

And Sarah’s over the table. She’s changing as she goes, ripping up Tony’s suit – sorry Tony – only when she lands Rachel’s somehow twisted her way out and is changing right on top of Sarah. A sleek silver-shine wolf, three times Rachel’s size, sinks her teeth into Sarah’s earth-brown neck and Sarah howls. Flips them. The table goes flying and Sarah is rolling Rachel through the restaurant and they’re biting at each other, feet digging away at bellies, growling and whining and finally speaking a language Sarah understands. She wrenches herself human enough to get a mouth and a voicebox, says: “Give up.”

Underneath her, the wolf shifts into Rachel – all the way Rachel, except for the bristling canine fangs and the claws and the silvery shine to her skin. “You can’t win,” she says; her voice is a growl. “All you’re going to do is make a mess. Again.” She draws her legs back and  _kicks_  and Sarah goes tumbling off of her. She hits the ground. Rachel stands, swaying, bristling silver, dress gone. “Yield,” she says, “or I’ll make you.”

Sarah stands up. Pulls back tail, pulls in ears. Feels her muzzle vanish; snarls anyways.

“Fine,” Rachel says, and lunges. And they’re fighting, again – less brutal, more like a dance. Rachel looks bored. Fuck Rachel: she’s bleeding and her eyes are burning alive. She has no right to look bored. Sarah pins her against another table, sinks teeth into the soft part of Rachel’s neck–

Rachel whines.

They both go still. The smell of the air changes; Sarah breathes it in through quick huffs of air, feels the wolf circling in her chest. Between her teeth Rachel’s heartbeat is a rabbit, raw and perfect. Sarah flicks her eyes up and meets Rachel’s eyes: furious, burning, gold.

 _Fuck it_ , she thinks, and crushes her mouth to Rachel’s mouth.

She’s mostly a person, but wolf enough to taste the different bloods in Rachel’s mouth – the meat, the wolf, the throat. Rachel’s blood and Sarah’s blood. Rachel’s canines and incisors and other mysterious wolf-teeth that only have wolf-names. Her tongue in Sarah’s mouth. Sarah groans, bites, presses closer, digs her claws into the tablecloth and rips it to shreds. “Fuck,” she breathes, and digs her claws into Rachel’s shoulderblades; the air smells again like a new sort of blood. Rachel claws her way down Sarah’s back, rips the delicately-furred skin right open. Sarah whines. Rachel growls. Sarah wants to rip Rachel’s throat open with her teeth, or maybe just hump Rachel’s leg until she comes, or maybe drag Rachel out into the woods and bring down a deer with her and then lick the blood tender and soft out of Rachel’s fur. Who knows. Who even knows. She wants all of it and she wants it now.

Rachel’s hands settle onto Sarah’s hips, dig in wolf-claws; Sarah’s hips slam forward, sending the silverware on the table clattering like nervous teeth. She breaks the kiss to lick at Rachel’s throat, to taste her, to drag the tips of her teeth along Rachel’s collarbone. The bad thing about the change is that it rips the clothes right off of you – but the good thing about the change is that it rips the clothes right off of you, and Rachel is silver and unfairly beautiful under Sarah’s tongue. She kneads at Sarah’s skin like a terrible cat. Sarah kisses her way down, and when she gets to Rachel’s stomach she hears Rachel let out a quiet breathy laugh.

“What,” Sarah says around the jut of Rachel’s hip.

“Heel,” Rachel says. When Sarah looks up Rachel’s eyes are lit up electric.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “fuck that.” She hoists Rachel onto the table, slams Rachel onto her back and climbs up to straddle Rachel’s hips. She pins Rachel’s hands above her head, kisses her again. Keeps doing it – can’t stop doing it – the wolf is crooning joy in Sarah’s chest and Sarah’s almost laughing into the kiss at the bite and the blood of it, how good it tastes, how good it feels. She rolls her hips forward. Rachel makes some choking primal sound, bucks her own hips back.

Sarah breaks the kiss. Her lips are bloody. She licks them and tastes raw meat.

“You’re gonna let us in,” she rasps. “You’re gonna let us kill who we need to kill. You know why?”

Rachel exhales shakily through her nose; her eyes dart away from Sarah’s and then back again.

“‘cause you know I’m gonna come visit,” Sarah says. “You’re gonna give me your apartment number, Rachel, and whenever my pack’s in your territory I’m gonna show up at your doorstep and fuck you. You get that?”

“I want advance notice,” Rachel rasps.

Sarah leans forward and kisses her again. Rachel arches into it, needy, and makes a quiet sound when Sarah pulls away.

“You  _want_  to get fucked,” Sarah says. “Don’t you.” She can see Rachel about to do that non-answer twitch again, so she leans close – close – almost close enough. “Don’t you,” she says softly.

“Yes,” Rachel says, a trembling quiet sound.

“You agree?” Sarah says. “To the terms.”

“Yes,” Rachel whispers again.

“Good,” Sarah says, and licks her way back into Rachel’s mouth. She can feel the wild leaping of Rachel’s heart, and she can feel her own heart leaping in the same rhythm, and yeah okay maybe she’s thinking about it – blood on her teeth and the wolf baying in her throat and Rachel opening the door to her apartment and her eyes going gold and wide. Sarah’s pack is going to hunt every prick in a twenty-block radius from wherever Rachel lives, and Sarah’s going to – she’s going to – she doesn’t know. Take Rachel apart. Put her back together. Hers.

She drags her bloody mouth across Rachel’s neck. When she finds Rachel’s heartbeat again, she bites down.


	34. Someone else's wedding

Rachel finds Sarah frowning at discarded champagne flutes. God: she dressed up. Her dress is midnight blue. Her hair is straightened. Rachel wants to slam her up against a wall and bite her neck; instead she crosses the antechamber to Sarah.

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” she says.

“Why?” Sarah says. “‘cause you didn’t invite me?”

“This was never the sort of arrangement where I invite you to weddings.”

Sarah huffs out a breath through her nose. “Arrangement,” she mutters. She turns away from the table, plucks the champagne glass out of Rachel’s hand and puts it to her mouth. She matches her lips to the dark red smudge of Rachel’s lipstick – drinks. The entire thing. Damn her.

Sarah puts the champagne glass down on the table. She takes in Rachel’s dress: sleet grey, baring her shoulders and neck. Her eyes drag back up to Rachel’s face.

“You’ve stolen my champagne,” Rachel says.

“You weren’t drinking it,” Sarah says, and then Rachel grabs the front of Sarah’s dress – pulls her forward – kisses her. It’s good champagne; it was the best thing about this wedding before Sarah arrived. Now the best thing about this party is the dizzying mix of champagne and the taste of Sarah’s mouth. Damn Sarah, damn Sarah, damn her. Damn the greedy opening of her lips against Rachel’s; damn her palm splaying over Rachel’s bare shoulder, leaving her skin goosebumping. God damn every single piece of her.

Rachel leans back. Doesn’t lick her lips. Says: “Leave.” Says it too hoarsely.

“Leave with me,” Sarah says. She takes her hands off of Rachel’s shoulders (damn her) and takes one step back, another. “Come on. This shit’s no fun anyways.” She tilts her head to the side. “Really like that dress, Rach.”

God, Rachel hates her. Tragically Rachel hates her in a way that means she wants to push Sarah against the table, get down on her knees, and take Sarah apart so completely she can’t remember her own name.

It’s difficult to say no, but she says it: “No.” She turns on her heel and leaves the antechamber, re-enters the ballroom – the glitter of chandeliers, the slow stilted turns of people who learned how to waltz when they were children and have since forgotten their lessons completely. Rachel swerves around the impromptu dance floor, looks desperately for a waiter who might have more champagne. None. Damn Sarah. She shouldn’t have come. She shouldn’t have ruined this. She shouldn’t have left Rachel here alone. 

Sarah has probably already kicked her heels off; she’s outside, walking through the night-quiet grass, banging the heels of her shoes against each other. Shoulders hunched, jaw set into rigor mortis anger. She’s terrible when she gets like this – she grips onto Rachel’s wrists hard enough to leave bruises, she growls instead of moaning, she shudders and falls completely to pieces when Rachel puts her mouth on the soft space between Sarah’s chin and throat. Rachel should have left with her. (She couldn’t have left.) (She refuses.)

Some dull groomsman asks Rachel to dance – and there’s no champagne, so there’s no reason to say no. She follows him. The band is making their stubborn way through Swan Lake; it sounds terrible. He fumbles her hand into his. They’re dancing, in the packed middle of too much expensive perfume and too many women who are far too old for any of this. Rachel’s eyes wander around the wedding, spot the bride in an explosion of white tulle, wander away again. Still no champagne.

“Mind if I cut in?” Sarah says. She’s pitched her accent into something respectable, and she’s smiling with a sort of plasticine falsity at Rachel’s erstwhile dance partner. She manages to cut in, because Sarah usually gets what she wants. (Damn her.)

She leans in close to Rachel – she – puts her mouth against Rachel’s ear and mutters: “I don’t know how to waltz.”

“Believe me,” Rachel breathes back, “I can tell.” She switches their hands, takes the lead. “I know you have some small sense of rhythm. Use it.”

Sarah hums. “I could ruin you,” she says thoughtfully. “Right now. Crazy, yeah?”

“You can always ruin me,” Rachel says. She means it to be light. It isn’t light. She fumbles for something to save this moment – can’t find it – switches tactics. 

“I thought you’d left,” she says.

“Spent half a bloody hour straightening my hair,” Sarah says. “I’m not leaving without you.”

Her body is warm and close to Rachel’s. Her hands are sweating.

“Quite a bit of effort, considering.”

She smells like midnight.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Well.” She stumbles awkwardly through a few more seconds of the waltz, mutters: “Don’t really want anyone else, so.”

The song ends. Everyone lets go. Rachel lets go. Sarah is looking away, into the crowd; her shoulders are hunched, her mouth is crumpled. Rachel hasn’t seen her like this before. She only really knows Sarah furious.

“Get me champagne,” she says.

“Get your own,” Sarah says. Her eyes flick back to Rachel’s.

“Someone stole my last glass,” Rachel says. “I’m wary of thieves.”

Sarah’s mouth twitches up a little bit. She’s still wearing her heels. She should take them off; they don’t suit her. She should be barefoot. She shouldn’t be here at all, but she is, because she wanted Rachel. Because she wanted Rachel to leave with her.

“You’re such a bitch,” Sarah says. It sounds like a confession.

“You’ll find that won’t change when I’m intoxicated,” Rachel says, and walks away. Again. She doesn’t know how to talk to Sarah. She doesn’t know what to say. Damn her. Rachel circles until she finds an empty table in the corner of the ballroom, takes a chair. Someone’s shawl is discarded on a chair, trailing down to the ground like a broken wing. God, she really can’t stop thinking about Sarah’s mouth. Or maybe just Sarah, damn her.

And there: Sarah, with a bottle of champagne and two empty flutes. She pops the cork, pours some, passes it to Rachel. Rachel drinks: stars.

Sarah clinks her glass against Rachel’s and drinks. “Who’s the couple,” she says.

“I haven’t the faintest idea. A coworker. There were seats that needed to be filled.”

“Not enough for you to need a plus one, yeah?”

Rachel turns and looks at her. “What do you want? Sarah?”

“I said,” Sarah says. She puts the glass down. “I told you. What the hell do  _you_ want, Rachel?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel says, and then: “You.” She drinks more champagne. It’s really going to her head, considering she already ate dinner. It really is making her just a little dizzy.

“Leave with me,” Sarah says.

“You’re impossible,” Rachel murmurs. She drains the rest of her champagne, puts the glass down on the table.

“ _I’m_ imposs–”

“Do you have a car.”

Sarah stops. “Yeah.”

“Take the champagne,” Rachel says. “They don’t deserve it.” She stands, makes for the exit. This time Sarah is right behind her, arm brushing against Rachel’s arm, their feet clicking in almost perfect synchronicity on the ground. They’re in the antechamber, again. The room is empty. Sarah has started to swing the champagne bottle, like a child with a brand new toy.

Rachel exhales through her nose as they step outside. “Your dress,” she says.

“What about my dress.”

“It suits you.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “That a compliment?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Sarah says again. The distant sounds of classical music reverberate, shivering through the dark dew-wet grass. “I’m down there,” Sarah says, pointing. They head down there. The night echoes with the light from the wedding, the sound from the wedding. Their feet make soft non-sounds in the grass.

“I’m going crazy,” Sarah says in the quiet. “I’m just – crazy. Thinking about you.”

For a moment: crickets. Then Rachel says: “It’s mutual.”

“Bullshit,” Sarah says. “I’ve never even seen you make a bloody face, Rachel. You’re a cyborg.”

“All I can think about,” Rachel says, “are the sounds you’re going to make when I touch you. It’s distracting. I don’t enjoy it.”

Sarah laughs. The sound echoes like a thunderclap. “Sorry,” she says, sounding amused. “I’ll try and be less hot.”

“Don’t do that,” Rachel says. 

Sarah stops, looks at her. The shape of Sarah like a lion in the dark. There’s something terrible about knowing that she’s going to wake up to Sarah, naked, covered in bruises from Rachel’s teeth; it feels like it already happened and Rachel is already forgetting it. She can’t read Sarah’s face in the dark. She wants the champagne, she doesn’t want the champagne. After a moment she turns back and keeps walking. A moment after that, Sarah follows her.

They stay silent until they reach Sarah’s car; the lights flash and the car chirps when Sarah clicks the remote. Rachel was driven here. That driver is gone now, somewhere in the night-city, ferrying around the various lonely Rachels of the world. Meanwhile, Rachel is getting into Sarah’s car. It’s a few years old and it smells faintly like pizza. Rachel doesn’t want to leave it.

The car growls itself to life as Sarah gets in and starts it. “Mine or yours?” she says.

“Surprise me,” Rachel says. She leans her head against the headrest, closes her eyes. Sarah starts the car and they drive away. Behind them, the waltz goes on and on.


	35. Bar owner/Bartender

The problem is that Sarah is the only one who knows how to make an acceptable martini. Vodka, not gin; French vermouth; stirred. Dry. One olive on a toothpick, tucked against the rim. Rachel likes her drinks to be a cold piece of metal pressed flat against the tongue; she wouldn’t settle for anything less. So. She keeps coming back.

Around Rachel her club is purring to itself, the bassline a distant thudding heartbeat under the glossy black floor. The dark mirrored ceiling stretches the room on into something chaotic and dizzying. It’s just a little too cold, because it is always just a little too cold. Rachel wouldn’t settle for anything less.

She watches the floor for a little while – the endless thrash of bodies, the way the lights shatter over them like glass. The soft sound of a cello twining its way around the bass.

Then Rachel stops fooling herself, and watches Sarah.

Sarah moves around her bar like a controlled hurricane. She flirts with a professional mania, sliding smiles across the bar alongside shots, touching wrists, giving the perfect amount of free drinks. She laughs, she sympathizes. Rachel is slightly in love with her, but only slightly – and she can control it, so. It doesn’t matter.

The martini tastes like beach glass dipped in water. She hadn’t wanted to hire Sarah, at first, but when she’d tasted the drink Sarah made her she’d known.

“You doin’ alright?” Sarah says. She’s slung herself partway over the bar, arms folded, the rolled-up sleeves of her black shirt pulling at her elbows. She’s tied her tie wrong, again. Just wrong enough that no one else would know. (Rachel knows.)

Rachel raises her eyebrows, drinks more. (It tastes like standing in the middle of a frozen lake with no one around for miles.) “Yes,” she says. “Now go do your job, Sarah.”

“You are my job,” Sarah says. “Ma’am.” 

She always says  _ma’am_  like a challenge.

Then she drums her knuckles on the bar and moves off again, down the line, refreshing drinks and removing drinks and pocketing phone numbers scrawled on black napkins. She is mercurial and charming and utterly beautiful, overwhelmingly beautiful, all harsh eyeliner and brown hair tumbling in a wave over her shoulder. Her tips are extravagant. Her tips should be extravagant; it only makes sense.

Rachel finishes her drink. She declines a second drink. When Sarah is at the other end of the bar, Rachel slides off of her stool and vanishes into the depths of her club. (Hers.) She scrapes her eyes over the lighting (a little too bright) and the floors (well-cleaned) and security (muscled). She passes that security and goes up to the deck above the club – deserted, as it usually is. Through the one-way-mirror-floor she watches people dance. On the second level, they don’t really look like much of anything.

The problem is that Sarah makes a damn good martini – it oils the gears of Rachel’s mind and makes everything too easy, and too cold. In the sterile silent upper level of her club she sits in a chair and watches the world below her. The frenzied dancers. The flirting, the fucking, the fighting (only the latter broken up by security). Sarah.

Eventually, even the last few stragglers leave. Rachel takes the staircase down again; her heels on the stairs are the only sound, besides the soft squeak of cleaning cloth on glass.

“Don’t like to think about what you’re doin’,” Sarah says from behind the bar. “Up there. All that time.”

She doesn’t sound particularly worried. She hasn’t even looked up from the glass she’s cleaning.

“Watching,” Rachel says.

“Bloody terrifying.”

Sarah finishes cleaning with a flick of cloth and deposits the glass neatly with the others. “Oi,” she says, “you want another one? Ma’am.”

“It’s late,” Rachel says.

“And who gives a shite about that.”

“I have to drive.”

“I can drop you off. If you want.”

Rachel stops walking through the empty club, raises her eyebrows at Sarah. “Surprise me,” she says.

Sarah tilts her head to the side, watches Rachel with bright sharp eyes. “You sure?”

“Always,” Rachel says. She turns away towards the dance floor, passes through leftover detritus – god, they’ve had sex here again, there has to be a way to stop them from doing that. Some couple has left a used condom on the floor. Terrible.

“You didn’t seem sure about me,” Sarah says, from behind her. Rachel can hear the sound of bottles shaking and pouring; she doesn’t turn around.

“It was a gamble,” Rachel says, “whether you would tend the bar or rob it.” She looks up to the mirrored ceiling. Sarah is moving slowly, and also watching Rachel. 

“Was it.”

“Unfortunately you took my choice away,” Rachel says. “When you made me a drink.”

She circles back around. A smile is twitching at the corners of Sarah’s mouth, trying not to break through; Sarah turns around, runs her fingers with familiarity over the bottles on the bar, grabs the neck of a bottle of bourbon. Returns to work.

Rachel takes a seat at the bar.

“So you don’t think I’m gonna rob you,” Sarah says.

“No,” Rachel says.

“Good,” Sarah says. She mixes something under the bar. She adds: “’cause I wouldn’t.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Sarah procures a napkin, puts a glass on it, slides both across the bar. Then she bends down under the bar to grab a beer, flick the top off, put the mouth of it to her mouth. She watches Rachel. Lowers the bottle. Says: “You know it won’t bite, yeah?”

“I’m trying to tell what it is.”

“It’s nothing,” Sarah says. “I made it up.” She gulps more of the beer, paces off to the other end of the bar to attack a stain with her cleaning rag. Rachel studies the glass again: it’s a very light shade of amber, almost gold. She takes a drink.

She takes another drink. 

And another.

It’s sharp and clear, vaguely bitter; the bourbon comes through at the end to press warmly against the roof of her mouth. It doesn’t taste anything like summer – but it doesn’t taste cold.

Rachel places the glass back down, taking care to match the ring of condensation on the napkin. “Upon consideration,” she says, “I think you’re the best investment I’ve ever made.”

Sarah laughs, just a little. “Christ,” she says. “She’s drunk.”

“I’m dazzled.”

“Dazzled,” Sarah echoes. She drifts slowly back down the length of the bar, wiping at invisible marks. It’s true. That she’s the best investment Rachel ever made. Without her this place would be nothing but an echoing hall of mirrors – but Sarah is here, and beautiful, and because of her it’s real.

Also, she’s not cleaning anything.

“Stop fussing,” Rachel says.

“Yes  _ma’am_ ,” Sarah says, and tosses the rag over her shoulder, and saunters back to lean on the other side of the bar. 

Rachel leans on her end. “Rachel,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“If you’re going to name the drink,” Rachel says, and pushes her empty glass towards Sarah with two fingers.

“Rachel,” Sarah says, and takes it. Her fingers touch Rachel’s fingers. She pulls back.

“Good,” Rachel says. She watches Sarah rinse the glass, clean it, dry it, put it back with its sisters. Then there’s nothing left for Sarah to do; she turns around, studies Rachel. She says Rachel’s name.

Telling Sarah to use her name was a mistake, probably. In retrospect.

“Come on,” Sarah says, while Rachel realizes this. “Let’s get you home, yeah?”

“I’ve had two drinks in six hours,” Rachel says, but that’s the only argument she offers. She lets Sarah lead them out – turning off the last of the lights, turning the alarm on, locking the door. Sarah talks during this; she tells Rachel about how she’s usually the last one here, how creepy this place gets when it’s empty – no offense – how it’s nice when Rachel stays. No offense.

“Nothing you’re saying is offensive,” Rachel says.

Sarah does an awkward little shuffle of a shrug and they walk together past the bar to where Sarah’s car is crouched up against the curb. The door clicks open; Rachel slides into the passenger’s seat, feels the car come alive as Sarah starts the engine. They pull onto the street.

“Left at the light,” Rachel says. Sarah nods.

“Sarah.”

“Rachel.”

(God, that was a mistake.)

“Thank you,” Rachel says.

“Give me a nice tip, yeah?”

“If I gave you a tip,” Rachel says, “would you take it?”

Sarah turns left. She says: “No.”

“Well,” Rachel says. “There we are.”

Sarah doesn’t respond; she stays silent, she drums her fingers on the steering wheel. Around her the car is also silent, and cold.

“The next right,” Rachel says.

“Rachel,” Sarah says. Again.

“Yes?”

Sarah doesn’t say anything. Then: “Thanks.” When Rachel doesn’t fill the silence, Sarah keeps going; she blurts: “For – the job, I. No one really. Y’know. Before. So. This is the first time I’ve tended bar for – more than a month. It’s. People don’t, yeah?” She nods decisively, like she’s said even one coherent sentence.

Sarah takes the next right. While she’s turning, Rachel says: “I didn’t want anyone else. I still don’t. And unless you develop amnesia, I don’t see that changing. It’s the next on the right.”

“Unless I screw up,” Sarah says. She flicks on the turn signal, pulls the car over to the curb.

“You won’t,” Rachel says.

“I always screw up,” Sarah says. She watches her hands clenching and unclenching on the wheel.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, and then Sarah kisses her.

Then she pulls back, immediately, scalded. “Shit,” she says. “Shit shit shit. Bloody shit. I’m sorry. I’m – I’m really sorry. Rachel. I – ah, shite. Sorry.” She doesn’t move, because there’s nowhere to go, because Rachel has trapped her in this car. Her hands writhe like prey animals on the steering wheel.

Rachel tips Sarah’s head towards hers and kisses her. She keeps it light and constant, just her mouth on Sarah’s mouth, her hand on Sarah’s chin. Sarah stays still: shaking, trembling, just around the edges. She doesn’t move. After a few shaking seconds, Rachel pulls back.

Sarah licks her lips, helplessly. “You’re drunk,” she says.

“We’ve established that I’m not.”

“I’m,” Sarah says. “And you’re.” She waves a hand through the air.

“Do you want this?” Rachel says.

Sarah swallows. She looks away, gnaws on her lip. Her heel bounces against the floor of the car.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “It’s a simple question. Yes or no. There isn’t a wrong answer.”

“Yeah,” Sarah whispers. “It’s – Christ, I know. I–”

“Honestly,” Rachel says. “Will you stop stuttering and kiss me.”

Sarah looks at her, eyes wide and startled, and Rachel exhales forcefully through her nose and kisses Sarah again.

This time, thankfully, Sarah understands the situation. She twists in her seat, splays a hand on Rachel’s arm, opens her mouth and lets her tongue stroke greedily against Rachel’s tongue. They both taste drunk; they aren’t drunk. Rachel isn’t drunk. She wants this.

A car speeds by, blaring music, and they both jump and break apart. Rachel rests her forehead against Sarah’s, touches her fingertips to Sarah’s jawbone. She says: “Will you come inside.”

Sarah nods.

“If you come inside,” Rachel says, “will I lose you.”

Sarah exhales. After a moment, she says: “No.”

Rachel leans forward and presses her mouth to Sarah’s. Sarah leans into it like a plant straining towards the sun.

Rachel breaks away, unbuckles her seatbelt, gets out of the car. Sarah follows, shoving her hands in the pocket of her uniform trousers. Rachel holds the door open for her into Rachel’s building.

“After this,” Rachel says, “you’re going to let me fix your tie. It’s sloppy.”

Sarah laughs, rough and giddy. “Alright,” she says. “That’s fine.”


	36. Criminals

Sarah is at her best immediately after a plan has worked, and also simultaneously at her worst. She paces in circles around the apartment; every time she brushes up against a surface, Rachel expects static. Doesn’t get it. Sarah is unholy and feral and the most beautiful person Rachel has ever seen and if she doesn’t stop moving soon, Rachel will–

“Say it again,” Sarah says.

“Twelve point three million dollars,” Rachel says, and Sarah says: “God.” The syllable is choked; it sticks in her throat. She says it like it means something. It doesn’t mean anything – Rachel doesn’t need the money, Sarah doesn’t even want it. But the number is huge and stolen from someone else. Rachel stares it down on the screen of her laptop. She can see Sarah reflected in the screen, small enough to not seem real.

Then she’s larger. Then she is standing behind Rachel, pressed up against the couch Rachel is sitting on, mouth pressed to Rachel’s throat. She always knows exactly how to use her teeth, so of course Rachel leans back for her; Sarah breathes hot breath on the column of Rachel’s throat and lets her hands wander towards the buttons of Rachel’s blazer.

Sarah at her best, at her unbearable worst.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. She means it like  _stop_  but it comes out like  _please_.

“Rachel,” Sarah says, which is an answer to both.

“Not now,” Rachel says. She leans forward. She shakes off Sarah’s hands. She continues the meaningless process of dividing money between their bank accounts.

“Let’s go out,” Sarah says.

“No,” Rachel says.

“You never come out with me,” Sarah says. She slings herself over the couch and perches next to Rachel. Her boots are on the white cushions. “Come  _on_ , Rachel. We deserve a party, yeah?”

Rachel has Sarah’s bank account information memorized, which somehow seems more intimate than knowing the sound she makes when she orgasms. She types the number in with one hand. “You’re welcome to throw a six million dollar party,” she says. “I’m sure you know–”

Sarah slams her laptop shut – pushes it aside – straddles Rachel’s lap. The whole warm weight of her. “Rachel,” she says.

“Sarah,” says Rachel, which is another confession. “You really are insufferable, you know.”

“So’re you,” Sarah murmurs, and then she leans in and kisses Rachel on the mouth. Sweet. Too sweet. Sarah at her unbearable best, her beautiful worst. Her fingertips tracing over Rachel’s hips and ribcage.

“I’m going to regret this,” Rachel murmurs.

“You say that every time,” Sarah says. “I ever let you down?”

Well.

“No,” Rachel says.

“No,” Sarah says. She slithers off Rachel’s lap and seesaws backwards towards the door. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll buy you shots.”

“I don’t like shots,” Rachel says.

“Yeah you do,” Sarah says. “You just wanna pretend you don’t. That’s why I’m buyin’, yeah?”

So Rachel follows her.

* * *

Sarah screams every time she takes a shot, laughs with it. Rachel doesn’t waste time. One, two, three. She hates shots. She hates Sarah. Neither of these things are true. One of the glasses had salt on the rim, and she can feel it crunching and stinging between her teeth.

Sarah finishes her last shot; Rachel tugs her in, kisses her. Greedy. Sarah kisses back with the exact same avarice – the thing you can see in the back of her eyes sometimes, the one that drew the two of them together in the first place. The alcohol shocks Rachel’s system and Rachel thinks:  _I am going to marry you, I am going to lock you in my apartment and never let you leave, I am going to–_

“Let’s dance,” Sarah says. She has her hands on Rachel’s hips. She sways the two of them back and forth, a parody of a slow dance to the thudding discordant nonsense of the club music. Rachel tucks her head against Sarah’s shoulder, smells sweat and bourbon and Rachel’s shower gel. They would get married in a government building; Rachel would buy Sarah a silver band, Sarah would buy Rachel something with a diamond on it because she’d know Rachel would want one. Rachel hates Sarah for knowing that Rachel would want a diamond. She bites Sarah’s neck.

“ _Oi_ ,” Sarah says, and lets Rachel go. Her eyes are wide and startled and young. 

“This isn’t dancing,” Rachel says.

Sarah looks at the dance floor. She looks at Rachel. She grins.

* * *

Three orgasms, six shots, one bar fight, four swallowed and meaningless confessions, one pause to vomit in a sink, one borrowed jacket, one bottle of vodka–

* * *

A man rocking against Sarah up against the wall and Sarah going  _oh_ and Rachel behind him biting his neck and Sarah going  _oh_  and her boot thudding at the back of his calf and that sound, that sound, Rachel knows that sound–

* * *

“Where do you find these people,” Rachel says, as a man and his girlfriend dole out white lines on a counter, and Sarah wraps herself around Rachel’s back and says “Say it again” and Rachel says “Twelve point three–”

* * *

Make that five orgasms.

* * *

“You’re worse than I am,” Sarah yells, “you know that?” and the music swallows both of them alive and Rachel laughs and screams  _yes_  because, god, she knows.

* * *

They’re everywhere – a club, a bathroom, an alley, a fire escape, a deserted commercial lobby, Rachel on her knees. She can’t bear it: Sarah, she can’t bear Sarah, she can’t bear it. Sarah with her fist shoved into her mouth, biting at her knuckles. Three months ago Rachel told Sarah about her business degree and Sarah laughed. Two weeks later Sarah found the degree and ripped it up, looking Rachel in the eyes; this was a gift. “I’m gonna,” Sarah says, “I’m gonna,” and Rachel thinks  _please_  and they both fall completely apart.

* * *

Dawn. Rachel steps onto the balcony of the apartment and watches the sun rise, watches Sarah watch the sun rise. Sarah’s pupils are large enough to swallow it – the sun – and her foot is drumming against the ground. She is wearing Rachel’s stolen shirt and nothing else. The filmy tips of it brush against her thighs. Bite marks. Rachel walks barefoot up to the railing and leans up next to Sarah. Her robe is probably tied too loosely, considering the sunlit city, but it doesn’t matter. Twelve point three million dollars. Sarah sighs and lets her head drop onto Rachel’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to stop,” she says.

“We don’t have to stop,” Rachel says, and Sarah rattles out another sigh and kisses Rachel’s mouth. She tastes like last night’s mistakes; they’re growing like pond scum on the inside of her mouth.

Sarah lets Rachel go. “It’s too bright,” she says.

“Then go back inside.”

“Hey,” Sarah says. 

“I’m listening,” Rachel says, but Sarah doesn’t say anything else. After a moment, she mutters: “I’m bloody exhausted.”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “You drank three bars’ worth of alcohol.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says. She buries her face into Rachel’s shoulder, says something unintelligible.

“You know I can’t hear you,” Rachel says.

Sarah lifts her head. “Let’s drive a car off a cliff,” she says. “Let’s die robbin’ a bank. Let’s be bloody fantastic.”

“Tomorrow,” Rachel says.

Sarah sighs, detaches from Rachel, wanders back inside. When Rachel looks back at the sun, it’s already high up in the sky; there aren’t any clouds, and everything is blue.

* * *

When she wakes up the next morning Sarah is at the kitchen table, still wearing Rachel’s shirt, typing manically at Rachel’s laptop.

“I found another one,” she says.

“Alright,” Rachel says, and goes to pour herself a cup of tea.


	37. Medusa

Being a monster isn’t actually that bad. Really. At least Sarah doesn’t breathe fire or anything; it’s just that anyone she looks in the eye turns to stone, and that’s fine. She can wear sunglasses. She doesn’t have to talk to people. She didn’t really talk to people that much anyway, before all this shit. She had S and she had Felix but they probably don’t miss her much – she was a pain in their asses. They’re better off now that Sarah has an eye contact problem and an inability to keep boyfriends. Everyone is better off.

It’s great, actually. She doesn’t have to pay for drinks. Squatting at people’s apartments is easy. Sarah gets all the clothes she wants, all the food she needs; she travels everywhere, she sleeps on mattresses that feel like clouds and she doesn’t dream about anything. She leaves statue gardens behind her.

And this is gonna be the rest of her life, and that’s fine.

She’d always wanted to be nocturnal, anyways. Now she sleeps in a stranger’s apartment, wakes up, haunts the alleyways near clubs until she finds someone bad enough for her to look at them and

then she hops an early morning train to the next town, rinse, repeat. She hasn’t stayed in the same city for longer than a week. She doesn’t want to read headlines about people turning into statues, and what it could mean, and how it could happen, and who they could blame. God, she doesn’t want to be blamed.

(God.)

(But she tries not to think about that.)

All the trains look the same: white plastic walls, scenery blurring by outside a window that Sarah doesn’t want to look out just in case she – yeah. She keeps her eyes shut and her sunglasses on and she listens to music loud enough that she can’t hear the slow sound of stone growing over skin. (She didn’t think it would make a sound) (if she’d thought about it) (but then she heard it) (and now she can’t stop hearing it) (and it echoes) (it just always echoes.) Toronto, now, apparently. It doesn’t matter. She wishes she could look at her heart in the mirror – she wishes she could do something to make it stop aching the way it keeps aching. She misses S and Fe. She misses London. She misses–

The train stops. Sarah turns the volume on her phone up louder, feels her earbuds sting her ears with bass, jumps out of the train and stares at the floor and makes her way into Toronto.

A quick glance up shows her a bright white sign in the distance; she sets her feet towards it. She’ll find someone’s apartment, follow them in,

and then she’ll sleep. All day. It won’t feel like anything, which is her favorite way to feel these days.

Sarah imagines that – sleeping, stone-sleeping – all the way into the lobby of the apartment building. It’s nice; Sarah hates it. Everything is marble and cream. She finds the smuggest man she can and trails after him, slowly, towards the elevator. Pulls out her phone. Fiddles with it, nods her head to the bass, watches him press an elevator button and doesn’t press any of her own. He smells like cologne. Before all this, Sarah would have brushed against his arm to press her own elevator button. Laugh at his jokes. Sway into his space.

She doesn’t need to do any of that shit anymore.

So that’s lucky.

The elevator dings. Sarah shoves past him onto the floor, turns down a hallway, keeps her ears open for the sound of his footsteps – heading the other way, shit. She doubles back, slow. Watches around the corner as he opens an apartment door and steps inside.

When Sarah pulls her earbuds out of her ears, the world rings tinny and thin. She stuffs them in the pocket of her jacket. She stuffs her phone in the pocket of her jacket. Slowly, she walks to the apartment door. Knocks.

He opens it, and then Sarah lowers her sunglasses and looks at him.

It always takes too long. A few seconds. His mouth is frozen wide open. Sarah bites her lip and shudders through it with him and then it’s done, and she ducks under his outstretched stone arm and goes inside. Closes the door. Looks around the apartment. It’s nice: glass, metal. A wine rack, great. Sarah paces through the empty rooms, listens to the sound of her own breathing and the slow fade of the ringing in her ears. She doesn’t want to die or anything – it’s just that this place is too quiet.

Then a voice rasps: “Ferdinand.”

Sarah actually jumps, like a cat, a few inches in the air; she bites down hard on her lip to keep from screaming. She goes quiet. That was a woman’s voice. Fuck, Sarah should have checked the bedroom first, she didn’t think to–

“ _Ferdinand_ ,” says the voice again. “Who was at the door.”

Sarah pads around the wall to the bathroom, where she looks through a cracked-open door to see–

A woman, in bed, which is normal.

Bandages all the way around her eyes. Less normal. Oh fuck. Sarah lowers her sunglasses and looks, openly: the woman sitting in the bed is bird-frail, hair a ratty blonde-brown mess around her ears, lips cracked. There’s an IV tethering her to the bed. She keeps turning her head in little sonar movements, trying to find Ferdinand – who definitely, absolutely is not coming.

“You’re blind,” Sarah says. Her voice is more raspy than the other woman’s. It’s been a while. (How long?) (A while, it doesn’t matter.)

The woman in the bed gives a violent full-body twitch at the sound, jerks her blind head towards Sarah. “Who are you,” she says, and then: “Get out. Where is Ferdinand. Get out.”

“He’s not coming,” Sarah says. She moves closer to the bed, sits at the foot of it. It feels like she’s pulled by magnets. “I’m sorry. Holy shit, you’re blind. I didn’t – I didn’t know you’d be – Christ, hey. I’m not here to rob you, I just need a place to sleep, I – please don’t call the cops, I – I just. Hi?”

A jerky, panicked hand darts out from the blonde’s pile of blankets and she fumbles for the cellphone on the table next to her – realizes it’s a touchscreen – holds it, desperate and useless. A few long seconds pass, filled with the slow choke as the woman in the bed gets her breathing under control. Finally: “What do you want,” she says.

“To sleep,” Sarah says, but she’s lying. She wants to talk and she wants to laugh and she wants to be touched and she – fuck – hadn’t thought about it, hadn’t even let herself think about it, the idea of having any of this again, she hadn’t known, she should have kept it buried, it’s pouring out of her and it’s dangerous. “What’s your name,” she says, and it comes out shaky.

The hands fold back together, trembling and small. “Rachel,” says Rachel, slowly and painfully. “Will you tell me what you’ve done to – Ferdinand.”

“You wouldn’t believe me.”

“I would like to know,” Rachel says, “if he’s dead.”

“He’s dead,” Sarah says. “I’m – shit, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m Sarah. I promise I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“I can’t do anything to stop you,” Rachel says. She turns her head towards the glass wall of her bedroom, the one that looks out on a balcony and the city below. Sarah stares at her greedily, takes in the clench of Rachel’s jaw and the slope of her neck and the cardigan she’s pulled tightly around herself. Rachel turns her head back in Sarah’s direction. “Well?” she says. “Sleep. Steal. Do whatever it is you were planning on doing.”

“Do you need–” Sarah says, swallows. “Do you need, uh, medicine? Or something? I don’t know shit about that whole–” she gestures to Rachel’s IV, realizes Rachel can’t see it. “Shit,” she finishes awkwardly. “But I – you know. So if you need help. I can.”

Rachel huffs out something that could be a laugh if it wasn’t teary. “The kindest thing you can do for me,” she says, “would be leaving me here to die.” She turns her head back towards the window, folds her arms around herself. 

“I can’t,” Sarah says. Swallows. Admits: “I won’t. Fuck you.”

Rachel says nothing.

“I won’t,” Sarah says again.

Rachel leans her head back against the headboard of her bed. Her face crumples; her breathing hiccups. Oh. Fuck. She really is crying. Sarah scrambles off the bed and goes back out to the apartment, flops down on the couch. After a moment, she sits up and pulls off her shoes. Then she lies back down.

Her heart is pounding against her ribcage. She doesn’t manage to fall asleep. What if Rachel dies? What the hell is Sarah going to do if Rachel dies, besides go back to the exact same life she was living before. What is she going to do.

After a few hours of wide-eyed lack of sleep, Sarah stands up and sneaks back towards the bedroom. Rachel is lying down in the bed, now, asleep. Her breathing is deep and even. 

Sarah sits down with her back against the wall and watches. She watches. She gets to watch and she watches. It feels like drinking water in a desert, watching the way Rachel’s breath makes the ends of her hair stir.

It’s only when she wakes up that she realizes she’s fallen asleep – sitting by the wall, legs folded to her chest, watching Rachel. Rachel is awake now. She’s sitting up again, hands folded, staring patiently at nothing.

Sarah sits up, wipes the back of her hand against her mouth; the sound is enough to make Rachel’s head jerk in Sarah’s direction. “Who’s there,” Rachel says, voice small and sharp.

“It’s me,” Sarah says.

“Sarah,” Sarah says.

“Of course it’s you,” Rachel says. “You’re still here.” More quietly: “Of course.” Then: “Are you sitting on the floor.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you sleep there.”

“Yeah.”

“Why.”

“Didn’t know if you were gonna die on me.”

“That isn’t how blindness works, Sarah,” Rachel says. Her voice is strained with something that’s almost laughter. “Even especially violent kinds of blindness.”

“What happened,” Sarah says.

“Quid pro quo,” Rachel says. “I’ll tell you my truth if you tell me yours.”

“I told you,” Sarah says. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“It doesn’t seem that I have very much of a choice.”

“I,” Sarah says. She laughs, hysterically. “You know I’ve never told anyone before? It never really comes up.” When Rachel doesn’t say anything, Sarah licks her lips and runs her hand through her hair and says: “I was. I was at a bar. There was this bloke. Nice – he was nice – he – I don’t know, he was fit, alright? So I – y’know, we talked. We went back to his apartment. It was good.” 

(It was.)

(It was really good.)

(Probably the best Sarah’s ever had.)

“Then, uh – his wife showed up, or, or somethin’, I don’t know, and – Christ, I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. She  _did_ something. Then she kicked me out and I went stumbling into the lobby and the – the doorman–” 

She’s crying.

The problem with this story is that she hasn’t told it before. She went over it over and over and over, right after it happened, and then she buried it. She had to bury it. There wasn’t any other way to keep going.

“I looked at the doorman,” Sarah says, “and then he was…he turned to stone, yeah? Turned to bloody stone. And the man behind the counter turned to stone. And everyone in the lobby turned to stone, right when I looked at ‘em. And I ran outside and they all turned to stone. And then I stopped looking at people. I stopped. I don’t do it except when I need somewhere to crash, or – when – I’m trying to be good, Rachel. I promise I’m trying to be good.”

“You turned Ferdinand to stone,” Rachel says.

“Yeah.”

“You’re right,” Rachel says. “I don’t believe you.”

“I can show you,” Sarah says. She drums her feet on the ground. “He’s still there. By the door. I can show you.”

Rachel shakes her head, a tiny little gesture.

“I promise,” Sarah says. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I haven’t – I haven’t talked to anyone since all this started. Just you. Christ, Rachel, I won’t.”

The head-shaking turns into the world’s smallest nod. Sarah stands up, slow. Steps carefully towards the bed. “Do you know,” Rachel says, “how to detach and reattach an IV?”

“No.”

Rachel exhales through her nose. “That’s fine,” she says. She holds her hand, palm-down, in Sarah’s direction. “Pull it out.”

“You sure?”

Nothing. Sarah reaches out and takes Rachel’s hand. It’s warm; dry. Fuck. Sarah used to shag three guys a night and feel fine, and now she’s touching Rachel’s hand with the tips of her fingers and she feels like she has to jump out a window. It’s too much touch. It’s – it’s too much.

She pulls the needle out. A bead of blood wells up and Sarah wipes it away with her thumb. “It’s out,” she murmurs.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “I haven’t lost all five of my senses, thank you.” She pivots, puts her feet on the ground. (Bare.) Slowly, leaning on Sarah’s hand, she stands. Her free hand spasms wildly in the empty air. 

“Here,” Sarah says. They walk. She leads Rachel through the doorway, slowly, out into the open apartment. “Your hand’s warm,” she says. Blurts. Like an idiot.

“Fascinating,” Rachel says. She fumbles her hand to the top of the couch and drags it along as they walk.

“Here,” Sarah says. They stop. She lifts up Rachel’s hand and puts it up against Ferdinand’s shoulder. God, she hates looking at them afterwards. He looks so unbelievably stupid.

Instead she watches Rachel: Rachel’s hands feeling along Ferdinand’s stone shoulders, his arms. She stumbles around him and feels his neck – frantic now – his hands, his hips. She brushes her fingertips against his face, and then stumbles backwards and leans against the wall. She’s shaking.

“This is a dead scene forever now,” she whispers to herself, “nothing will ever stir, the end will never brighten it – the end–”

“Do you believe me,” Sarah says.

Rachel just shakes. Her mouth is hanging open, and her breath comes in quick pants.

“I’m gonna take you back to bed,” Sarah says. “Yeah? Rachel?”

Rachel holds out one shaking hand and Sarah takes it, leads her. They’re still quiet. A dead scene. A dead scene. Sarah can’t stop thinking about how Rachel called it a dead scene.

She settles Rachel back in her bed. Rachel holds out her hand again, expectant, and Sarah finds the IV needle. “What do I do,” she mutters.

“Find a vein,” Rachel says. Her voice is calm and smooth. Sarah just listens to it and slides the needle in and then it’s fine. She gets Rachel a glass of water. She finds Rachel’s pills and gives them to her. She sits on the edge of the bed, close enough to Rachel’s hip that she can feel the warmth of it. 

“So,” Rachel says, after draining the water and managing to put it down on her nightstand. “I’ve Medusa as a houseguest.”

“What.”

Rachel tilts her head in Sarah’s direction; her forehead wrinkles as her eyebrows attempt to twitch. “Don’t tell me you can’t see the resemblance,” she says, voice very dry. “Otherwise you’re more blind than I am.”

 _I don’t know what that means_ , Sarah thinks, frustrated and burning, a thousand classes and tests and essays where Sarah hasn’t ever known the answer. She swallows down the fire licking at her mouth and says instead: “So what happened to your eyes.”

Rachel sighs out through her nose. “Do you have the time,” she says.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I meant the clock,” Rachel says. “Will you look at it.” After a moment, bitterly: “Please.”

Sarah grabs Rachel’s phone off the nightstand and clicks the button. The screen lights up with missed emails – work emails? – dozens of them – and a clock at the top that says 6:53pm.

“The bandages need to be changed,” Rachel says, after Sarah passes along the time and nothing else. “You can see for yourself. Fer–they should be under the sink.”

She stays very, very still when Sarah unwinds the bandages, and then they’re gone; the air smells like ointment and rot, and underneath are two hollow eyelids stitched shut over nothing. They twitch like they’ll open any second now and Rachel will finally be able to see Sarah’s face. It doesn’t happen. Sarah just cleans the stitches, lip bitten hard between her teeth, and then winds the bandages back. 

“I was CEO,” Rachel says, as Sarah goes. “I’d been working my entire life for it. The surgery – I thought it would be like ripping a bandage, if you’ll allow me to be trite. One sharp pain and then I’d manage it, instead of letting the disease…”

Sarah doesn’t know what to do with the end of the bandage so she sort of tucks it in and leaves it.

“As it turns out,” Rachel says, “living like this is unbearable. Suicide would have been more efficient. But here we are.”

“Sorry,” Sarah says, uselessly. 

“I’d trade,” Rachel says, “in a heartbeat. I’d turn every incompetent person I’d ever met to stone.” She reaches up her fingertips and cups Sarah’s face in one hand, lifts one trembling finger to Sarah’s eyelashes. Sarah blinks a few times, involuntarily.

“It stops being fun,” she says. She’d meant it light; it doesn’t come out light. “Trust me,” she says, which is also a mistake.

“You go from building to building,” Rachel murmurs. “You’re a parasite.”

Sarah swallows. “Pretty much.”

Rachel’s lips part and she breathes out. “Are you going to move on soon?” she says lightly. Sarah would almost believe it, except for how her fingers are shaking on Sarah’s neck.

“Took out your nursemaid, didn’t I,” Sarah says. “I can’t go yet, that’d be shite.”

“I suppose it would be,” Rachel says. She lowers her hand. Sarah waits, holding her breath, waiting for something she doesn’t know or understand. It passes. She can still feel it, hanging around them, but the moment is gone.

That night is the first – since – that she doesn’t go out. She heats up frozen meals from the depths of Rachel’s freezer. She and Rachel eat in Rachel’s bed; Sarah plays a DVD that’s already in the player. (“It’s fine,” Rachel says. “I’ve seen it before. I remember the details.”) She watches the eerie precision of Rachel’s movements as she manages to get food from her plate into her mouth, every single time. It’s terrible. Sarah wishes Rachel would look at her, could look at her, so she could turn Rachel to stone – she doesn’t even know why. Maybe so she can keep this. Maybe so she can run away from it.

The movie ends, eventually. Sarah grabs their food, dumps it in the trash, comes back. Rachel is lit up by the title screen of the DVD; her face is perfectly blank.

“I’m gonna crash on your couch,” Sarah says. “Uh. Just so you know, yeah?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rachel says. Her head swivels towards Sarah. “It’s a king size bed. The couch is uncomfortable, you’ll hurt your back. We hardly need two cripples.”

“Oh,” Sarah says.

“Right,” Sarah says.

She gets ready for bed. She helps Rachel get ready for bed. The intimacy is unbearable, for both of them. Sarah needs to run away; instead her greedy brain hoards every single time her skin touches Rachel’s skin. When she peels off her pants and jacket and dumps them at the foot of the bed, her skin shivers. Even though Rachel can’t see Sarah’s legs or arms or collarbone. Sarah still shivers.

She gets into bed, pulls up the covers. Outside, the sun rises. Sarah wonders if Rachel knows what time it is. Sarah doesn’t tell her; she just watches the sun pass across the blue sky and eventually falls asleep.

She dreams about snakes. She dreams she’s a snake, warmed by the sun; when she wakes up she’s curled up around Rachel, who’s lying on her back unmoving and very warm. There isn’t any reason for Sarah to cry. It’s not that she’s going to. It’s just that Rachel’s fingertips are touching Sarah’s, and that’s a hell of a thing.

Later, she helps Rachel stand.

Later than that it’s nighttime again; she’s restless, terrified. She shouldn’t still be here. A man is dead in the corner and Sarah has to go – hop a train, move on, disappear. Instead she paces around Rachel’s bedroom, reading emails out loud from Rachel’s phone until Rachel says: “Stop.”

Then: “That’s enough.” Sarah slides the phone into her pocket and keeps pacing, back and forth across the room. The city is electric and alive. It is also outside. Sarah isn’t there. She can feel a train in her blood but she isn’t on it. She’s inside. With Rachel. She didn’t turn on the light, so Rachel is small and etched out around the edges by the lights of distant windows. Quiet. Probably about to cry, because Sarah just read a shitton of emails that neither of them are equipped to deal with.

“It’s not gonna work,” Sarah says. Snaps, maybe. Maybe Sarah snaps.

She watches Rachel, who isn’t watching her hands.

“Get out,” Rachel says lightly. And then again, without any lightness at all: “Get out of my apartment, you parasite.”

“Fine,” Sarah spits, and it is, and it’s fine. She drops Rachel’s useless phone on the ground and gets the hell out of the apartment.

Outside the city is hot and thrashing with people and Sarah doesn’t have her sunglasses, fuck, she just watches the ground and mutters  _sorry_  every time she bumps into someone. She follows the distant sound of bass. There is always someone terrible out there; there is always someone who deserves this, or at least that’s what she can tell herself. Tomorrow she’ll be on a train. If she sees another blind woman in an empty apartment, she’ll call a hospital and then just leave her there.

In an alley, a man is hunched over the small shape of a girl. “Hey,” Sarah says, and when he turns around she looks him straight in the eye.

A mugger. Two drunks picking a brutal, bloody fight. Some perv who tries to catcall her. She’s not having it, not having any of it. Sarah paces the length of a city for hours and hours until everything is numb.

Then she closes her eyes, tightly, and goes back to Rachel’s apartment building.

She’d left the door unlocked for herself. She knew Rachel wouldn’t be able to get out of bed and lock the door, so Sarah left it unlocked.

Inside, Rachel hasn’t moved. When she hears Sarah come inside her head cocks towards her and she doesn’t make a sound. Sarah crashes onto the foot of the bed, covers her face in her hands. “I don’t know what Medusa is,” she says.

“That’s why you came back?” Rachel says.

“No.”

Rachel lets out a long, slow breath. She sits up in bed, fumbles her way over to where Sarah is lying across her bedspread. Rachel sits with her body curled towards Sarah but does not touch her.

“Medusa is a story,” she says. “A very old story. A girl is transformed into a monster, to punish her for her desires. She turns men to stone. Eventually, she’s slaughtered. We call this justice.”

Sarah closes her eyes, walking into the dark where Rachel is waiting for her. “I killed someone,” she says. “Tonight. A lot of people. I dunno. If it’s not justice I don’t know what it is.”

“Life,” Rachel says. “Terrible, isn’t it?”

Sarah nods mutely. Then she realizes Rachel can’t see it. Then she opens her eyes and everything is blurry and that’s because she is on her way to crying.

She feels the rasp of Rachel’s fingertips against her hair.

“Oh,” Rachel says.

“What?”

“You have lovely hair.”

“Haven’t washed it in days.”

“Well,” Rachel says. “It could be snakes.”

Sarah scoffs a laugh. “Could also be bloody pasta, couldn’t it,” she says. “What’s your point.”

“Nothing,” Rachel says quietly. She keeps stroking Sarah’s hair, slow and rhythmic and soothing. Sarah closes her eyes again. “Y’know,” she says, “haven’t talked to my family for bloody – months. My mum woulda said  _look at me, chicken_ , ‘n then I would have. Isn’t that shite?”

“You’re very brave,” Rachel says. “I’ve prided myself on my self-sufficiency, but I don’t think I could ever be as alone as you’ve been. Sarah.”

Sarah rolls onto her side, buries her face against Rachel’s thigh. It’s not bravery – she should tell Rachel that, but she won’t, because she’s selfish. Because she’s a monster. She won’t tell Rachel that mostly she’s just scared and shitty and trying to be good so she can figure out a reason why a hero shouldn’t hunt her down and kill her.  _That isn’t bravery_ , she’d say.  _I’m just desperate_. And then Rachel would stop touching her. Which would be understandable.

But she says nothing, so instead Rachel buries her fingers in Sarah’s hair and cups Sarah’s skull in her warm hand. Without moving her hand she lies down next to Sarah. All Sarah can see from here is the endless blank expanse of Rachel’s bandage. Underneath that, she knows: the purple-blue bruise of Rachel’s eyelids, like the smear of eyeshadow around Sarah’s eyes that is days and days old. Rachel probably wore mascara before this, and eyeliner, and false eyelashes. Sarah would have hated her. Sarah would have turned her to stone and would have tried so hard to not think twice about it.

She lifts her hand, slowly, puts delicate fingers against Rachel’s lower lip. Rachel inhales choppily and then exhales. Her mouth stays open. Sarah inches closer, and closer, and when Rachel doesn’t tell her no Sarah kisses her.

It’s been such a long time.

A small, terrified part of Sarah thinks that when she kisses Rachel magic will happen: the bandages will float away, Rachel’s eyes will open and look into Sarah’s eyes and it won’t hurt either of them. But the rest of Sarah knows that this is only going to be a kiss. It isn’t the best kiss she’s ever had, but it’s her favorite. Their lips are both too dry and Rachel’s nails are scratching a little into Sarah’s scalp with how desperately she’s hanging on. The only sound is the quiet hitching of their breathing, the wet slide of their lips against each other.

Sarah stops kissing her. Sarah starts kissing her again. This happens two or three times, and then she manages to finally stop; Rachel loosens her grip, runs her fingers through Sarah’s hair again.

“Can I stay,” Sarah says.

“Please stay,” Rachel says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “yeah, okay,” and she does.


	38. Cab driver

Traffic outside the cab has come to a standstill, and in the backseat one of the women is starting to make sounds. Thin, breathy sounds. Sarah inches the cab forward a few inches, brakes, checks the rearview mirror –  _Christ_  – and says: “If you stain the backseat you’re paying for it.”

She’s had to do this before. Usually the couples will jump apart, blushing, or they’ll decide they can’t hold it in for another bloody second and they’ll stumble out of the cab to fuck against a wall somewhere.

In the backseat, one of the women (blonde) lifts her mouth from the other’s throat. She rummages in her clutch for a second, pulls out a bill, leans forward and tucks it in Sarah’s cupholder. Then she goes back to what she’s doing.

“Oh, come o–” Sarah starts. Then she looks at the fifty dollar bill in the cup holder. Then she slowly closes her mouth.

She turns up the radio but it’s still a slow, shitty ride across town. Sarah drums her fingers on the steering wheel, Sarah jolts the accelerator forward every time there’s even the smallest bit of space on the road, Sarah goes crazy. A little bit.  _Oh my god oh my god oh my god_  from the backseat, quiet and high, the blonde murmuring something Sarah can’t hear through the music. They’re there for thirty years. When Sarah pulls over to the curb the dark-haired woman wobbles out of the cab and the blonde puts another fifty into the cup holder with fingertips slick with – Sarah looks back out the dashboard. She can  _feel_  the smile on the blonde’s face as she slithers out of the cab.

One hundred dollars. That’s an insane amount of money, that’s more than Sarah’s made all night. A hundred dollars. They could’ve been full-on fucking back there and it’d still be worth it.

Sarah finishes for the night, goes back to her apartment, drops her clothing in a pile on the floor and collapses into bed.

Then she fucks herself. She’s not an idiot, and she can’t really pretend; that blonde was murmuring  _good girl_  to herself with her hand up that other woman’s skirt.  _I want you to come, you’re going to come, good girl_.

And Sarah does. She tries not to think too hard about it.

* * *

Mostly she’s successful–

–okay, maybe she’s not successful–

–until a week later, when the blonde gets back in Sarah’s cab. Which: what the fuck. Sarah drives the same route, mostly, and she drives it almost every night – being a nanny to drunks pays – but she doesn’t really get repeat customers.

But there they are. The same couple: the blonde in a short sharp silver dress, the brunette in something tight and blue. The brunette’s more giggly this time. She leans between the seats and cheerfully slurs her address; she smells like apple perfume. Sarah opens her mouth and almost says:  _what, here for a repeat performance?_ But she’s not actually an idiot. She closes her mouth again. She makes eye contact with the blonde in the mirror, and the blonde’s eyes flare; she smirks. Sarah looks away and pulls them out onto the road.

God, the brunette won’t shut up this time. Keeps laughing and whispering little bursts of apple-scented air into the cab. Part of Sarah wants that blonde to shut her up, part of her wants to get the brunette some water and tell her she should get better taste in women. She doesn’t do either. She swerves through midnight traffic, pretends that’s enough – usually it is enough, the rush of it is enough, but right now part of her mind is burning and focused on that backseat. There – a flicker – they’re making out, and there’s just the wet sound of their mouths sliding against each other. The brunette says  _oh_ ; the blonde tucks her hair behind her ear with a gentle, predatory hand–

Fuck. It’s a different woman.

Not the blonde, the blonde’s the same, it’s a different brunette. That’s why – fuck. What are the odds of the same bloody blonde dragging two dates into the back of Sarah’s cab?! Why is this her luck. Why is it every time she checks her rearview mirror before she changes lanes she has to see the tease of the blonde’s fingers at the bottom of her date’s skirt, the lithe flicker of them. For the very first time Sarah wishes she could jump out of her cab and  _run_ , head out into the city, leave the two of them here in the cave of Sarah’s car that’s just stinking of apple now all the way to the brim. They’re so loud. Forty, fifty, sixty years in the cab until they arrive (it’s a different address) and Sarah lets them out. Or. Lets the brunette out.

The blonde closes the cab door.

She puts another fifty in the cup holder. “I do hope that’s sufficient,” she says. Her voice is a low rumble, bored and self-satisfied. Her date is out of the cab already but she’s still there, poised in the backseat, the hem of her skirt riding up and baring an insane amount of thigh.

“What if it’s not,” Sarah says.

The blonde exhales through her nose, reaches into her clutch again, pulls out another fifty. She puts it into the cup holder. When she leans forward, Sarah gets a flash of her perfume: something dark, something amber. She leans back again.

“Have a pleasant night,” says the blonde, and she exits the cab.

* * *

The next time is a different brunette. She’s a squealer. The blonde leaves a hundred dollars and doesn’t say anything except a murmured, perfunctory “Thank you.” Then she’s gone.

* * *

There’s a story Sarah heard one time about a dog and a bell and drooling and it probably explains why she has a flash of hope every single time someone opens her cab door. She’s made a few hundred off this one woman, and that’s why Sarah wants to see her again. That’s why. She just has to put up with one prolonged gasp from whoever the blonde’s brought into her cab, and then she can just – go home. Get drunk. Jill off. Think about why she’s doing this, driving in circles around the city so she feels like she’s going somewhere. Try not to think about that. Jill off again.

Every time she gets flagged down, she jitters. A few times a week she’s right. Weekends, mostly. Sometimes something in the middle of the week. Christ, Sarah knows this woman’s entire bloody schedule.

Two fifties in the cup holder. Sarah says: “You can stop that, yeah?”

“Pardon?”

“The–” Sarah gestures with one hand, taps the other in patterns on the steering wheel. “That’s bloody insane, how much you’re paying. You can stop.”

The blonde tilts her head, furrows her brow in a parody of concern. “What if I don’t want to stop?”

Sarah stares at her. Blinks, once. “Your life.”

She gets a smile for that, and a proffered hand. “Rachel.”

Sarah frowns at the hand, but it’s clean. Or at least it looks clean. She shakes it. “Sarah.”

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “A pleasure.” She hasn’t let go of Sarah’s hand. “I am sorry for the disruption,” she says with absolutely no sincerity.

“You know your date’s outside,” Sarah says. Part of her wants to let go of Rachel’s hand. Part of her knows that’s losing.

“I wouldn’t say  _date_ ,” Rachel says. 

“You know your fucktoy’s outside.”

“Well,” Rachel says. “I suppose I should go, then.” After a long, deliberate second, she lets go of Sarah’s hand. Sarah resists the urge to wipe it on her jeans.

“Until next time,” Rachel says. She leaves the cab. Sarah watches through her rearview window as she drives away; watches Rachel find the latest brunette, lean into her space, and then usher her into the building. Watches them disappear. Watches them both vanish.

* * *

Next time, Rachel makes eye contact with Sarah in the mirror. Sarah looks away first.

* * *

How the hell does Rachel keep finding her cab. Why doesn’t Sarah turn her away – say  _no, no thanks, not into whatever voyeur kink you’ve got, find another driver. Good luck_. She tells herself it’s for good reasons; Rachel’d just drag those poor girls into some other cab with some other driver who could be a murderer or a pervert or someone who’d tell Rachel she didn’t have to follow the latest brunette out of the cab and she could just–

Alright, maybe it’s not good reasons. Sarah never claimed to be a good person. It’s been – a while. The good times for finding hookups are the same as good cab hours, and she needs to eat more than she needs anything else. 

It’s been a while.

…

God, that isn’t the reason either.

The reason is that a few times a week Sarah checks her rearview mirror and Rachel is looking back at her, eyes pulling with their own sharp gravity. It takes Sarah longer to look away each time.

* * *

“Think this is the longest relationship I’ve ever had,” Sarah mutters when Rachel’s rummaging in her clutch for yet another pristine fifty dollar bill.

“Yes,” Rachel murmurs back, “I’m generally opposed to long term. Very few people are interesting enough to merit more than one night.”

She holds out the bill in one imperious hand. Sarah doesn’t take it, raises her eyebrows.

“I’m flattered,” she says.

“You should be,” Rachel says. When Sarah doesn’t take the money out of her hand Rachel sighs in a put-upon sort of way, leans forward, and tucks the bill neatly into the pocket of Sarah’s leather jacket.

“You would make things easier for yourself,” Rachel says, “if you would take what you want.”

“Your girl’s waiting,” Sarah says.

“Do you really care?”

“She seemed nice.”

Sarah’s pulse is a long drumroll, faster and faster. Rachel’s dress is black and long-sleeved, which is somehow worse than no sleeves at all. Sarah swears the bill is burning a hole in her pocket.

“You seem nice,” Rachel says.

“No I don’t.”

“No,” Rachel says, “I suppose you don’t.” She leaves, again. Sarah’s used to her perfume by now – amber, roses. She flicks the turn signal on and breathes in the smell of it, pulls herself out into traffic. Thinks about it. Pulls the fifty out of her pocket, crumples and uncrumples it in her hand.

* * *

It’s taking the brunette eighty years to get out of Sarah’s cab. She keeps leaning forward and kissing Rachel again, biting at Rachel’s lower lip, laughing. Rachel’s face does absolutely nothing, but Sarah wasn’t really expecting it to.

When the door closes behind the brunette, the cab is very quiet. Sarah drums her fingers on the steering wheel. Rachel sighs through her nose, opens up her clutch, leans forward to put the money in the cup holder.

Sarah twists around, grabs the front of Rachel’s dress, and smashes their mouths together. Hard. Rachel’s lips are slick with her own lipstick and someone else’s lip gloss, and Sarah bites it off – all of it – she’s popping threads on the front of Rachel’s dress and she feels like a wild animal. A wild animal.

Rachel lets out a quiet, shuddering moan and kisses back. Her hands tangle in Sarah’s hair and yank; her mouth is warm and wet, wanting. Everything smells like amber.

Sarah lets go. Leans back. Pulls the bill out of the cupholder. She can hear Rachel breathing, the high hiccuping sound.

“G’night,” Sarah says.

Rachel doesn’t say anything. The only sound is the rasp of her breath as she fumbles for the door handle and lets herself out.

* * *

Two women let themselves into Sarah’s cab. One blonde, one brunette. The blonde is Rachel and she has her mouth against the other girl’s throat, sucking bruises into the skin. The brunette stutters an address and Sarah pulls the car out into traffic. She goes too fast, but she always does.

In the backseat, in the flash of city lights, stuttering images: hands and mouths and the neck of a dress pulled down too far. Not Rachel’s. Rachel never pulls her own dress down. Never lets any of the others do it either.

 _Hello_ , says Rachel, watching Sarah watch her. She says it with her eyes. Sarah takes too long to look away, sends them swerving through the lanes, sends them to where they’re going. In the backseat the brunette whines. “Good girl,” Rachel murmurs. The radio throbs.

Across town. Sarah pulls over. “I’ll pay,” Rachel says. “Let me,” Rachel says, and the brunette does. She leaves the cab. She closes the door. Sarah watches Rachel in the rearview mirror; reflected, Rachel watches Sarah.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Rachel says.

“Have you.”

“I’d like you to take me somewhere else,” Rachel says.

“Your gi–”

“She isn’t mine,” Rachel says. “She isn’t anything.” She tilts her head to the side. “Did you like her?”

Sarah shrugs a shoulder, adjusts her hands on the steering wheel. “Dunno,” she says. “Wasn’t paying attention.”

Rachel leans forward in the backseat, reaches out, puts her fingertips against Sarah’s wrist. Says: “You were.”

Sarah twists around, just a little bit, watches the enormous dark bloom of Rachel’s pupils. 

“I was,” she says.

“Good,” Rachel breathes, and cups Sarah’s face in both hands, and kisses her. Good. Rachel tastes like someone else’s spearmint gum. Sarah runs her fingers through Rachel’s hair, cups the back of her head, touches her neck, touches her shoulders. With one hand she reaches out and fumbles the master lock on the cab; the doors click shut. Rachel hums. 

“So?” she says, her mouth right up against Sarah’s mouth.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Alright. Where do you want to go?”

Rachel gives her an address, and leans back into the shadows of the backseat. Sarah gets back on the road. She looks in the rearview mirror, watches as the brunette on the curb gets smaller and smaller and goes. When she looks away, Rachel is already waiting to meet her eyes.


	39. College party

The inside of the house is all warm wet smoke and people yelling over each other; outside it’s cold. Sarah should have brought her jacket but she didn’t and now she’s screwed. She shivers. The door bangs shut behind her, leaving her alone in the backyard of a stranger’s house.

Well, not alone. Rachel Duncan is there.

She’s sitting on the edge of the porch, wearing a black dress too short to be believed and smoking a cigarette. It’s hard to know what’s weirder: the cigarette, or Rachel’s bare toes curled in the grass under the porch.

Actually, thinking about it, they’re both weird.

Rachel turns her head slightly – enough for Sarah to see the curve of her profile but not enough for detail. She says: “Hello, Sarah.”

Sarah didn’t think Rachel knew her name. It’s not like Sarah ever speaks up in their shared Lit class; she just sits in the back and messages Cosima from her laptop. She’s taking the course pass-fail. She’s not like Rachel Duncan, smart in a way that mostly just comes off as bored.

“You smoke,” Sarah says. She folds her arms around herself; her elbow brushes against the goosebumping skin of her stomach that’s bared by her crop top.

“Don’t tell,” Rachel says. She says it in a way that implies that the concept of Sarah telling anyone is absolutely hilarious. Then she lifts the cigarette to her mouth again and breathes out a long plume of bright-silver smoke.

Fuck it. Sarah crosses the porch, sits down on the edge of it next to Rachel. She can feel the bass from inside thudding through her hipbones. She doesn’t know how Rachel is still.

“I don’t give a shit if you smoke,” she says.

“I initially took up the habit to upset my mother,” Rachel says conversationally. She inhales from the cigarette, exhales smoke. Says: “It worked.”

“Cheers.”

“Thank you,” Rachel says. She offers the cigarette to Sarah. The roll of her wrist is a joke at Sarah’s expense, so Sarah has to take the cigarette – even if she doesn’t smoke. She inhales. Coughs. She fumbles the cigarette back in Rachel’s direction and Rachel actually laughs, soft and surprised.

“Well,” she says. “That will teach me to judge based on appearances.”

Sarah’s mouth tastes like ashes. “Ugh,” she says, and “shite. How the hell do you stand that.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything except smoke. Sarah leans back on the porch with both hands, feels the music heartbeating through the heels of her palms. “Why’re you even here, anyways. Thought you wouldn’t be seen dead with the peasantry.”

“Occasionally it suits me to lower myself,” Rachel says.

“And then you sit in the back and don’t talk to anyone.”

“I didn’t find the party very interesting.”

“Then leave.”

“Sarah,” Rachel says. “Why are you here? On this porch. Attempting to convince me you know how to smoke a cigarette.”

Sarah shrugs a shoulder. She digs her boot heels into the grass and twists it so the grass and dirt come up in chunks. “Dunno,” she says. “Guess I just got bored.” She tilts her head, so she can watch Rachel out of the corner of her eye. “You come to these a lot?”

“No.” More smoke.

“They’re all the same,” Sarah says. “All of ‘em. You get drunk off piss and then you dance with the same ruddy people you’ve been comin’ to parties with all year and sometimes you go home with ‘em and it’s. I don’t know. I want it to be…yeah, I dunno. Something.”

“Something,” Rachel echoes distantly. She leans over and stubs out her cigarette on the porch, flicks it out into the black pool of the backyard. Sarah hears Cosima’s voice in her head desperately hissing something about environmentalism – and this would all be better, probably, if she was drunk. Cosima would be quieter; Sarah would be louder in all the right ways. Instead she’s mostly sober and the inside of her mouth is lined with smoke.

“Will you tell me,” Rachel says, “if you find whatever you’re looking for.”

Sarah laughs. She can’t help it. The idea of coming up to Rachel Duncan in a lecture hall and saying:  _hey, good news, I won at beer pong and things are looking up_  is unimaginable. Rachel would be wearing heels again. They’d be strangers.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sure. Alright. I’ll let you know.”

“Good,” Rachel murmurs. She pulls her shoes on and stands – so Sarah is eye level with her thighs. Rachel wouldn’t even have to lean down to tangle her fingers in Sarah’s hair. She isn’t going to do that, but she could.

Instead Rachel goes back into the house. Shitty of her. Nothing left outside but a vague haze of cigarette smoke and the echo of that  _good_. Sarah shoves the heels of her hands into her eye sockets, groans, and goes back into the house.

It’s exactly the same as when she left it. This is not surprising at all. Sarah elbows her way through the mess and finds the table littered with bottles, empties one into a cup and drains it. Does that again. Goes back into the crowd.

God, it smells like shit in here.

The dance floor is all clumsy hip-swaying and groups of straight girls clustered together, laughing, yelling, throwing their hands up. Sarah gets to the middle of that and jumps up and down to some song she’ll have forgotten by the end of the night. The alcohol crashes through her system; it drains the smoke from the inside of her mouth. She wishes she was still outside, and it would be great if she didn’t wish that – it would be great if Rachel would climb out of her head, so Sarah wouldn’t be tempted to tell her all the ways that she’s lonely.

Which means of course Rachel is there. Somehow, in this packed-close floor of rogue elbows, no one is touching her; she’s just moving to the beat in a slight and almost unnoticeable sway.

When she sees Sarah looking at her, she closes the distance between the two of them – grabs Sarah’s hips – kisses her. They’re moving to the same beat; Sarah doesn’t know if it’s the beat of the song, but it feels more real than anything else. Rachel has one thumb hooked through Sarah’s belt loop, and her kiss is soft and insistent. She tastes absolutely terrible. Sarah hates smoking. She wants to lick along Rachel’s teeth until she can’t taste anything else.

She hooks her arms around Rachel’s back and kisses her and kisses her and they’re here at the party but also somehow they’re still outside on the porch and Rachel gets it, she understands. Sarah can tell, just from the way that they fit together.

Rachel buries her face in the curve of Sarah’s neck, presses her mouth to the skin under Sarah’s ear. “Leave with me,” she murmurs. 

Sarah nudges Rachel’s head back towards hers and kisses her again. It’s the rush of a perfect shot – the good shit, the adrenaline high. Sarah bites Rachel’s lip and Rachel shivers. Her thumb traces curiously along Sarah’s waistband.

Rachel breaks the kiss. “Leave with me,” she says again.

Sarah doesn’t answer – she’s already turning, finding Rachel’s hand with her hand, pulling Rachel out of the party. Back out into the cold. Sarah exhales warm air into the night and it plumes like smoke and it’s gone.

“Hurry,” Rachel says. “It’s far too cold out here.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. She’s already starting to shiver – but her hand, where Rachel’s grabbing it, is warm.


	40. Fairy tale

Rachel recognizes the sword first, before anything else. It’s true iron; it sings to her blood in a way she finds discomfiting. People rarely bring iron this far up the hill. Usually they try begging. When that doesn’t work, they try fire.

The front door to the castle opens with its usual glacial silence, and a woman steps through. She notes the glass floors and glass walls in the same way that Rachel notes her hair (brown) and her clothing (leather, dusty) and her sword (stained with black blood). The woman looks at Rachel and Rachel notes her eyes. They’re brown. They are too rich a color to remind Rachel of dust.

“You,” says the woman, like Rachel should recognize her.

“Good,” Rachel says, “you made it.” She tilts her head to one side. “Tea?”

The stranger in the doorway lifts her sword and points it at Rachel’s throat, even though she can’t reach Rachel from here: Rachel is on the spiraling glass staircase, her black skirt rippling up three fragile stairs. It’s not far enough. Fifty feet away and the sword makes Rachel’s bones ache. True iron can kill her. It’s one of the few things that can, and she hates it for that.

“Break the curse,” the stranger says.

“I’m afraid I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re referring to,” Rachel says.

“You cursed my daughter,” says the woman, with her voice shaking – and Rachel remembers her. Sarah. Completely unextraordinary, except for the fact that she’d attracted the notice of a few garden fae with sharp teeth. They’d come to the birth. Rachel hadn’t been invited; she never is, which always fails to bother her until the moment that it makes her furious.

She does terrible things, when she’s furious.

“Kira,” Rachel says. A beautiful baby. Round-faced. Blessed with the gifts of knowledge, and fae-sight, and good luck. Blessed with Rachel’s gift: forgetting.

“You don’t get to say her name,” Sarah spits. She steps further into the castle; her boots chime on the glass floor. The floor reflects several two-dimensional Sarahs around her. Rachel feels one of her hands clench on the banister – which is stupid, since she refuses to be frightened.

“I didn’t leave a loophole,” she says. She doesn’t remember her own fury, but she understands it: it’s always sealed up tight, so no one else can break it. She wouldn’t have given Sarah or Kira an escape route. She never wants anyone else to have an escape route.

“Bet you didn’t,” Sarah says. She comes closer. She’s at the foot of the stairs now.

“Killing me won’t stop it either,” Rachel says. “There’s nothing I can do. She will forget you. That’s inevitable. She’ll forget everything eventually.”

Sarah climbs a step.

“By the time she’s eighteen, she won’t remember her own name.”

Another step. Rachel doesn’t move; she summons fire into her hands, flickering and furious and wild.

“You can die here, if you’d like,” she says. “Kira won’t remember that you abandoned her.”

Sarah stops. Her sword droops in a sudden, violent motion; its tip screeches against the glass. It will scar. The firelight reflects in Sarah’s eyes, which have exactly the same amount of fury.

“You’re lying,” Sarah says.

“I’m not,” Rachel says. “You would know that by now, wouldn’t you? You’ve asked everyone. All of the others. Every hedge witch from here to the sea. I’m your last resort, and I have nothing to give you.”

“You  _do_ ,” Sarah says. “You can fix this. I know you can fix this, you bitch.” The curse word rattles life back into her spine; she lifts the sword, charges closer between one blink and the next and has the sword up against Rachel’s throat.

Rachel feels her skin curdling. She hates iron she hates iron she hates–

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses.

Sarah laughs, giddy and terrified. “Or what?” she says. “You’ll curse me?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t,” Sarah says. “Not like this.” She leans closer, eyes delighted. “You’re scared. You’re terrified.”

Yes.

Yes, and there’s nothing else to say to that. Sarah leans forward, the iron bruising the skin of Rachel’s neck, and hisses: “ _Fix it_.”

For some reason Rachel doesn’t quite understand, she says: “Fine.”

Sarah surges backwards, drops the sword, almost stumbles backwards off the stairs. Irresponsible; idiotic. Rachel could and should kill her. Instead she drops down in a heap of skirts on the glass stairs, touches fingertips to the blistered bruise around her throat.

Sarah drops down into a crouch next to her. Suddenly she’s years younger – her eyes are full of the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, the way that children looked at Rachel a long time ago.

“How,” Sarah says. “You’re right, I asked everyone. They said it’s impossible. I knew – I  _knew_  it wasn’t impossible. So how’re you gonna do it.”

“It’s old magic,” Rachel says.

“Sure,” Sarah says. She already sounds impatient. Her arms are crossed over her kneecaps; one finger is tapping on her thigh. “So? You gonna fly there or what.”

“Old magic,” Rachel continues, “requires ingredients. Procedures. Time.”

That freezes Sarah up completely. “I don’t have  _time_ ,” she says.

“You asked for a cure,” Rachel says. “There’s only one.”

Sarah rockets back up to her feet. She jumps up a few stairs, and then back down; she runs frantic hands through her hair. “Fine,” she says. “This is – hell. Bloody hell. What’s the cure then.”

“Memory,” Rachel murmurs to herself. “Rope. Song. Time. Then – the throat-strings of a swan, twelve oysters with pearls inside, and the heart of a tree that’s a hundred years old.”

“And where do I get any of that.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Rachel says. “But if you find these things, I can cure her.”

Sarah bends down in a motion that’s almost casual, picks up the sword, brandishes it towards Rachel again. “Go get ‘em,” she says.

“You’re young,” Rachel says. “And furious, and brave. These things will serve you better than any of my magic could. Weren’t you the one saying you didn’t have time to waste?”

“I,” Sarah says. The anger cracks; the sword shakes. Underneath it she’s scared – the way people get scared when they realize, for the first time, that they’re going to die. After this realization they tend to get mad at Rachel. Rachel lifts two fingers to the sword and pushes it away, slowly, even though it sears the tips of her fingers with a twist of thin white smoke.

“Go, then,” she says. “Bring the swan here once you’ve got it. The vocal cords will be better fresh.”

“And you can fix her,” Sarah says. “You can fix this.”

“Yes,” Rachel says.

Sarah’s knees buckle and then she stands again, rebuilds her spine. She pulls her hair over one shoulder and sheaths the sword. “Swan,” she says. “Tree. Oysters. Fine. Alright.” Then she nods to herself, once, and takes the staircase down.

“Sarah,” Rachel calls after her.

Sarah turns around, looks at her with that same terrible naive hope burning in her eyes.

“Did you kill the hounds that guarded the gate? I only ask because I’ll have to make replacements.”

Sarah’s face slams shut like a door. “Yeah,” she says. “So make new ones. I’ll kill ‘em again.” And she storms out.

So Rachel makes new ones. They aren’t too difficult – a lock of hair, a whispered secret. They bristle into fury so easily. All of her secrets have teeth.

That takes no time, so it leaves her too long to consider Sarah. Why help her? Why dredge up an old cure, muscles and blood and hearts? Why do any of this?

She knows the answer, and that’s why she refuses to acknowledge it. Instead she paces around the castle. She kills off all the plants in the empty greenhouse and then makes them bloom again out of spite. She sets a fire in a barren room and watches it starve to death on cold glass. She watches the horizon. Terrible.

Eventually, Sarah comes back. She kicks open the door with one heavy boot and drags a swan in by the neck. It’s squawking and beating its enormous brutal wings – Sarah has the murderous expression of someone who has been dealing with this for days. There’s a livid bruise blooming on her face. She’s lucky that her bones aren’t broken.

She lets the swan go in the main room and it screams its way around, flapping in frantic circles. Once it realizes it has nowhere to go, it goes still.

Rachel is watching from glass reflected in glass reflected in glass. She isn’t in the main room. Sarah looks around for her, scrubbing her hands through her hair; she pulls out her sword an inch or two, shoves it back in its sheath. “Hey,” she yells, and “ _hey_.”

Rachel doesn’t answer. Sarah takes two steps forward into the castle, and then the swan – with no ceremony or warning – violently pisses on the floor.

“Eugh,” Sarah says, and steps back. She shakes her head a little bit. She leaves.

The door closes behind her, startling the swan; it squawks at the door before getting bored and resuming its toddling around the entry hall. Rachel puts herself in the room, stares at it.

“Well,” she says.

 _Whah!_  says the swan. It offers no other breathtaking insight; it just waddles around, shaking its feathers from time to time. Rachel considers it. She could transform it into something else, but that would ruin the point of it; she could give it the power of speech, but swans rarely have anything interesting to say.

Instead she brings it out behind the castle and makes a lake for it out of shards of glass. It takes to the water, honking gleefully. Out on the lake it looks serene – like the childish mess it was inside was merely accident.

She stays by the lake for a long time. The swan finds things to eat in the manufactured water, seems amused gliding and sleeping and – presumably – urinating into the water. Sometimes it will spend minutes and minutes calling out, repeatedly, screaming for something that isn’t there. Possibly it’s lonely. Rachel refuses to give it the chance to speak, so she supposes she’ll never know.

After what might be days and what might be months, she feels the door of her castle crash open again. She blinks herself there, back to the top of the staircase. Sarah is cradling a large wooden crate full of seawater and oysters. She looks exhausted. Her hair is one enormous snarl.

“Oysters,” she says in a rough voice. She drops the crate the ground; it sloshes, it smells of salt. Then Sarah’s attention is caught by something in the middle of the – oh, it’s the urine stain from the swan. Rachel had forgotten it.

“Seriously?” Sarah says. “You need that piss for somethin’ or are you just lazy.”

Rachel blinks, and it’s gone.

“The latter,” she says. Her own voice is rough from disuse, as usual. 

Sarah is still staring at the floor. “It’s gone,” she says. Her hand goes for the sword, but it’s not on her hip anymore – bartered? sold? 

Forgotten?

“Yes,” Rachel says. “The benefit of magic.” She flicks the crate into the air with her fingertips, guides it through the hallways towards a back room. Sarah is watching her, wide-eyed. A small part of Rachel uncurls and reaches for that expression.  _See?_ it says.  _Do you see what I can do? Are you in awe of it? Please, are you in awe?_

She crushes it.

“Don’t know how I forgot,” Sarah says. “That you’re.” She gestures vaguely with one hand – it could mean  _magic_ , or  _evil_ , or  _unlikeable_ , or  _miraculous_. Rachel has no idea. She watches Sarah roll her shoulders, shake her hands out.

“The swan is in the back,” Rachel offers. “Alive. Extremely loud.”

“I hope it’s shitting all over your floor,” Sarah says. She doesn’t sound especially menacing, just tired. Her knuckles are bruised. From what? Who knows.

“No,” Rachel says. “It keeps to the lake.”

Sarah blinks. “You’ve got a lake.” It simultaneously is and isn’t a question.

It’s suddenly essential that Sarah see the lake, the swan, how extremely capable Rachel is of not destroying. She twitches her eyebrows up in Sarah’s direction, creates a door in the wall and moves through it.

She feels Sarah following her.

Then Sarah is next to her. She smells like sweat and dust and aging. Of course she smells of aging; time has passed. Rachel doesn’t know how old Kira is now – eight, perhaps, or maybe eighteen. Aging has always confused her. Time confuses her too.

Outside, the lake is enormous and sparkling in the sun. The swan circles it, around and around. Utterly alone.

Sarah stands there, folds her arms over her chest. She shifts her weight from foot to foot. “It doesn’t know you’re gonna kill it,” she says. “Rip its guts out. Do whatever witch bullshit you’re gonna do with ‘em.”

“It’s blissfully unaware,” Rachel agrees.

“Does this make you happy?” Sarah says. “When you blow someone’s life to shit. That what gets you off?”

“No,” Rachel says.

Sarah tilts her head and watches Rachel from the canny corners of her eyes. “Your dogs didn’t attack me,” she says. “On the way in.”

“You’re familiar to them,” Rachel says. She doesn’t take her eyes off the swan.

“Next time I’ll bring a bone.”

Next time. There will be a next time. One more time. That’s the way of stories.

“Try a mirror,” Rachel says. “They’ll eat the reflected light.”

“Right,” Sarah says. “'course.” She sighs heavily, turns on her heel and heads back into the castle. Terribly brave of her, or maybe just terribly foolish. Rachel could seal up the walls. She could trap Sarah in a glass maze until age caught up to Sarah and crumbled her into dust.

Instead she shapes a hallway through the castle. She lets Sarah go.

 _Weh_ , says the swan.

“Don’t,” Rachel says, and goes back into the castle.

She built this place herself, when she was young; she was so proud of it. The endless empty space of it. She shaped towers, antechambers, ballrooms. She left them empty. The entire castle is clear – she can see for miles and miles, all the way down the hill. She can see everyone coming. When people came. When people came, she could always see them.

Now she goes back outside and watches the swan. “I’m going to kill you,” she tells it. “It’s a mercy. It’s better than living like this.”

The swan says nothing. It ducks its head under the water, finds something, and eats.

Sarah finds her out there. Rachel had known the second Sarah entered the castle, but she’d made a doorway back here instead of going to greet her.

Sarah dumps her bag by the shore, yanks off her shoes and rolls up her trousers and wades into the water. “Dryads are the only ones who know how old the ruddy trees are,” she says. “Had to find a bloody dryad. You know how hard it is to find a bloody dryad?”

Sarah doesn’t seem to need an answer, so Rachel doesn’t give her one. Instead she watches Sarah walk gingerly out of the water; she’s using the edges of her feet, trying to avoid her blisters. That’s ridiculous.

“Lift your foot up,” Rachel says.

“What?” Sarah says. She watches Rachel warily – smart of her. Everything has a cost.

“Don’t be a child,” Rachel says. “Lift your foot.”

Sarah does, slowly. Rachel touches her fingertips to Sarah’s blisters and they curl into themselves like flowers and vanish. 

“Oh,” Sarah says. The expression is crawling back onto her face, slowly: the surprise of finding out that magic is real and can happen to you. A little bit of wonderment. A smattering of joy.

“Do you have it?” Rachel says.

“Have what,” Sarah says, and then she looks at Rachel and blinks rapidly. “The. The tree. Yeah. Right. Got that.” She rummages in her backpack; Rachel catches the bright spark of a mirror inside before Sarah pulls out a chunk of wood wrapped in a cloth. She holds it out.

Rachel steps closer, peels back the cloth and touches the palms of her hands to the wood. It’s ancient; the circling of its thought is slow and patient. So old, and dead now. For what? 

She folds the cloth back. “Good,” she says. She lifts the fingers of one hand and twitches her index finger; the swan comes shooting towards them across the water, and at the last instant Rachel shrinks it to one of its feathers. She catches the feather in her hand.

“Put your shoes back on,” she tells Sarah. She goes inside; the hallways bloom around her until she finds the pool of brackish water she’d made to hold the oysters. Those she shrinks into rattling little things the size of coins. She folds them into her palm. What else does she need? Chamomile, valerian root, starberries. The hallways take her to her stores – ancient, dusty – and she gathers what she needs. It’s been a long time.

She hears Sarah’s slow footsteps on the glass behind her. “Do you have a knife?” Rachel says without turning around.

“Yeah,” Sarah says.

“Is it iron?”

Sarah pauses. “No,” she says.

“Good,” Rachel says. “I’ll need it.”

She turns around. Sarah is framed in the doorway, eyes wide and shy and bruised with dark shadows. She is so unbearably young. Rachel wants to shrink her down and hold her in her palm with the feather and the oysters and the soft tufts of herbs. She wants–

Sarah sucks in breath through her nose, lets it out. Swallows. Says: “Please.”

When Rachel doesn’t say anything, Sarah keeps going. “Please don’t – please don’t hurt her. I don’t know if this is funny to you or what but – I need you to – I need you. Please just fix it.”

“Alright,” Rachel says softly. She holds out a hand. “Come here.”

Sarah visibly startles, takes a few wary cat-steps closer. She touches her fingertips to Rachel’s hand.

“Tighter,” Rachel says.

Sarah grabs her hand. Her grip would be bruising, if Rachel bruised from things like touch.

“Alright,” Rachel says again, and takes them there.

Sarah’s house is small. Rachel remembers it – she remembers marching up the walk, she remembers the magic curling in her throat. She remembers the soft round o of Kira’s mouth widening in surprise. She remembers entirely too much.

Sarah bangs on the door with a fist and it opens; it reveals an older woman with red hair. Kira? No, not Kira, not while Sarah’s still this young.

“Sarah,” says the stranger in the doorway. “Well, well. You came back.”

Sarah’s chin goes up. “I’ve got a cure, Siobhan,” she says. “I found it. Will you let me in or what.”

Siobhan looks from Sarah to Rachel and back to Sarah again. “You’ve said that over and over again,” she says. “I don’t know why you think I’ll keep letting you risk your daughter’s–”

“Mommy,” says a little voice, and a girl ducks around Siobhan’s legs to throw herself at Sarah. Sarah catches her, swings her around. “You’ve been gone for hours,” Kira says. “Where did you go?”

Sarah and Siobhan both make the same wounded expression. It hasn’t been hours. It doesn’t make very much difference to Rachel, but she supposes to the mortal it’s everything.

“I had to get something for you,” Sarah says. She bounces Kira onto her hip, looks at Rachel. Looks back at Siobhan. “S,” she says. “Will you let us in.”

Siobhan’s mouth goes flat; she steps back from the door. Sarah carries Kira inside and Rachel follows. “Her bedroom would be best,” Rachel says. “Someplace familiar to her.”

Sarah carries Kira up the stairs. Sarah’s daughter watches Rachel over Sarah’s shoulder, her eyes wide. Does she remember? Well, she won’t for very much longer. Eventually she’ll forget all of it. The thought is a comfort, even though Rachel is here to make it unreal again. 

Sarah carries Kira into bed and Kira lies down, utterly trusting. “Are you here to help me stop forgetting?” she says.

“Would you like that?” Rachel says. Her voice is soft and bruised. “Would you like to remember again?”

Kira ducks her head in a nod.

“Then yes,” Rachel says. She puts the shrunken swan and oysters down on the ground, carefully. “I’ll need a bowl,” she says to Sarah. “A cup. Something.”

Sarah leaves the room. Rachel closes her hand into a fist; the herbs inside are crushed to dust. Kira watches her with the wide, enormous eyes of a child about to witness magic.

“Close your eyes, sweetheart,” Rachel says. Kira does. Rachel blows the dust into Kira’s face and she falls asleep, easily and suddenly. By the time Sarah comes back Kira’s breath is a slow tide.

“What did you do,” Sarah says.

“I need the knife,” Rachel says. “And the wood.”

Sarah doesn’t move.

“She’ll be fine,” Rachel says. “Would you like her to wake up before this is completed?”

Sarah jolts back to life. She opens her backpack, tosses the chunk of wood and a folded knife on the ground. She puts the bowl down. She sits next to Rachel, wide-eyed and terrified.

Rachel brings the oysters back, twists them open one by one with the knife and dumps their insides into the bowl. The shells she tosses aside. She crushes the pearls with the handle of the knife, stirs the whole thing together into one glittering mass. The wood she crushes with her hands and mixes in. The result is a wet, thick powder, at times silver and at times rust.

Next, she brings back the swan.

It begins to scream the second it’s full-grown again, but Rachel grabs it by the throat and pulls the knife through all the way down. Blood spills into the bowl. The swan thrashes; its wings batter at the floor and batter at the bed and nearly break a lamp. Then it goes very, very still.

So still.

When Rachel lets it go, its body crumples into a heap on the floor. Its eyes are glassy nothingness. She slices its vocal cords out, ties them together to make one large loop of muscle. This she drags through the bowl until it’s coated, utterly, in wood and blood and sea.

“Sit her up,” she says.

Sarah doesn’t say anything.

“Sarah,” Rachel says, and turns, and – oh – drinks the light out of Sarah’s eyes, the wonder, the horror. Eats it alive.

Then Sarah blinks, and it’s gone. She shoves herself to standing and lifts her daughter with a grip gentle as cobwebs. Kira’s head rolls on her neck.

Rachel steps over the dead swan, seats herself on the bed. She strings the cord through her fingers, loops it over itself into a complicated web, and carefully lowers it over Kira’s head like a crown. She places the palms of her hands to Kira’s skull. Blood and pearl-dust stain Kira’s hair.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, and magic jolts through Kira like thunder through rain. 

When it’s done, Kira’s body slumps again. Rachel lifts the swan-cord from Kira’s head, wraps it around her own left wrist like a bracelet. It’s empty, now – all of the potential of it has been pulled out. It’s useless. Rachel stands up, steps away from the bed and kneels to fold the swan back into a feather again.

“That’s it,” Sarah says.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “She’ll wake up soon. It’s done.”

She twirls the feather between two fingers, stands up – and Sarah is crying. It’s the sort of furious sobbing that people only do when there’s no one else around, or when they’ve given up. Sarah’s face is buried in her hands. She looks exhausted. It makes Rachel furious again – that she did this to Sarah, that she’ll do it again. That Sarah didn’t invite her to the birthing celebration. That, if Sarah had invited her, Rachel would never have gone.

She’s going to have to destroy the lake when she gets back to the castle. She doesn’t have a need for it. The swan is dead.

Sarah sits up, swipes at her eyes with shaking hands. “Fuck,” she says. She looks at Rachel. “Fuck,” she says again. “I didn’t think you were gonna do it. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Rachel says. “It was very possible that I wouldn’t.” She tilts her head to the side. “Don’t spread the word,” she says, “that I did.”

“Or what,” Sarah says.

“Or everyone will come to my castle,” Rachel says, “and murder my hounds.”

“So why’d you do it,” Sarah says.

Rachel considers her. Sarah has dribbles of swan’s blood flecking her neck and her hands; there are still tear tracks on her face. It only takes one step to bridge the distance between them and kiss her.

She’s never been good at explaining things. Instead she presses her mouth to Sarah’s, cups Sarah’s face in her hands, holds her. She feels Sarah’s mouth open slightly – not enough to take it as rejection or acceptance. She feels Sarah’s pulse thrumming in her neck.

Then she vanishes, like a coward.

The castle is empty and cold. Rachel passes through her hall of mirrors to the outside, and then she shatters the lake into glass. She digs up the earth. She brings back the swan, and buries it. Stupid animal. She watches the ground until it blurs; when drops of water hit the dirt, they bloom into flowers with no names.

The empty space beyond the glass castle grows a garden, slowly. Rachel lets it. She used to grow more flowers; children always liked it when she did. They gave their hearts up so easily to her. She let them.

“You didn’t let me say thanks,” Sarah says.

Somehow, Rachel startles. She couldn’t have not known Sarah was here; she feels every inch of this castle in her bones. And yet.

“I assumed you wouldn’t,” she says. “It was a zero-sum transaction. An undoing. It wasn’t a gift.”

“Maybe you should stop assuming,” Sarah says.

Rachel turns around. Half of the flowers in this garden are the color of Sarah’s eyes, which is embarrassing.

“Are you here to thank me?” she says.

“No,” Sarah says. She steps forward and presses her mouth to Rachel’s. She grabs Rachel’s arms and deepens the kiss into something insistent and greedy and beautiful. Rachel hears herself making a sound; she tangles her hands in Sarah’s hair, kisses her back. She’s selfishly grateful that she can keep the memory of this. No one will be able to take it away from her – even Rachel couldn’t cut it out of herself. She has this until she dies, or until the end of time. Whichever comes first.

When she breaks the kiss and opens her eyes, all of the flowers around them have burst into bloom.


	41. Vampire/Hunter (NSFW)

Rachel finds Sarah in a back alley, bleeding from the knuckles and continuing to briskly and efficiently punch another vampire in the face. Rachel can smell Sarah’s blood from the end of the alley – any vampire could – but she also has Sarah’s phone tracked, so she hadn’t needed the extra advantage. She stands at the mouth of the alley and watches Sarah smash her combat boot into the vampire’s toe, punch him in the face again. Everything is already healing – the nose, the foot. Sarah is tiring. The vampire won’t tire; that isn’t how they work.

Rachel walks deeper into the alley. Whatever slime coats the asphalt is absolutely going to ruin her stilettos; she doesn’t brush too close to the walls for fear of getting something on her dress. She stays in the middle. She watches Sarah: the clenched teeth, the endless whirling dervish of the fist. She watches the other vampire snake a hand in towards an opening in Sarah’s offense and claw towards Sarah’s stomach.

Then she’s close enough, and she reaches forward and snaps his neck.

He crumples to the ground like a bag of loose chopsticks. Sarah has to stop mid-punch – her fist skids to a halt in the air, close enough for Rachel to see each small smear on her knuckles.

“Where’d you come from,” Sarah says. She sounds a little wary and mostly furious.

“Is that any way to thank me for saving your life?” Rachel says. She looks down at the ground, watches the miniscule ticking of vertebrae re-aligning. “I presume you brought a stake.”

“I had it covered,” Sarah says. “Didn’t need you.”

She’s probably telling the truth, but Rachel lets herself smirk anyways. Sarah scoffs a low, rough sound between her teeth and rummages in the pockets of her beat-up leather jacket. She procures a handful of loose toothpicks and a pencil stub; she collects those into a handful and without ceremony crouches down and plunges them into the other vampire’s heart. 

He crumbles instantly into dust. Sarah flicks her eyes up nervously in Rachel’s direction – it’s charmingly naive that she thinks Rachel cares – before she picks up the toothpicks, wipes them on the other vampire’s shirt, and shoves them back into her pockets. She stands up. She claps the dust from her hands, wipes her palms on her pants.

“Elm,” Rachel says. “Elm is best. Oak, perhaps. I once met a hunter who only used bamboo stakes – elegant, if unprecedented.”

“Do you ever shut up,” Sarah says. She knocks past Rachel on her way out of the alley; her shoulder bangs against Rachel’s shoulder, and Rachel would stumble if she was an animal that stumbled.

The smell of Sarah’s blood is driving her insane. She isn’t that animal either.

“Do you ever temper your daring with anything resembling common sense?” she answers. She catches up to Sarah’s loping stride easily – the perks of inhuman biology.

“Shut up,” Sarah says, eloquently. “And piss off. I can’t hunt with you around, you scare all the others off. They can smell you.”

“We don’t smell like anything,” Rachel says. 

“Bullshit,” Sarah says. “I smell your perfume.”

“Do you?”

Sarah’s jaw sets. Her hands clench and unclench into fists in her pockets. “It’s pathetic,” she says. “The way you’re chasing after me.”

It is, but Rachel won’t lose face. She gambles.

“Then you’re equally as pathetic for expecting me to.” Sarah’s shoulder’s stiffen – good. “Counting on it, even. Roaming into my part of town, waiting for me to resc–”

Sarah bangs a fist against the wall without slowing down. The corner of her hand scrapes open. Rachel had a glassful earlier tonight – an old vintage, thick and sweet. It left maroon smears on the inside of her glass; it left maroon smears on the outside of her lips. If she focuses on that with all of her attention, she can keep walking next to Sarah without–

No, Sarah’s stopped walking. In the middle of an empty street, the streetlights dull and hazy, she’s stopped walking. She looks at Rachel. She digs her nail into the heel of her hand and doesn’t flinch, even when blood wells to the surface and starts trickling down her wrist and Rachel says, voice rusty: “There are more painless methods of suicide.”

Sarah’s face is motionless. Rachel saw her for the first time in a worse part of town, following a man who smelled like nothing back to his apartment. Her face was a death mask. Rachel followed her, and followed her, and eventually – nights later, when she couldn’t bear it anymore – asked her name.

Blood trickles down Sarah’s wrist; a drop hits the ground. Sacrilege. 

“You were saying something,” Sarah says. “About me being pathetic.”

“Was I,” Rachel says faintly.

“Dunno,” Sarah says. “Were you?”

Rachel had a glassful earlier tonight. It wasn’t enough.

“Sarah,” she says.

“What,” Sarah says. “Do you want something?” and Rachel is already moving and Sarah is already moving and Sarah’s laughing, high and rough and real in the night-streets. She’s nearly as fast as Rachel is – Rachel’s never asked why, or how – and she can duck around Rachel with the ease of a dancer. The smell of her blood is everywhere. Rachel’s teeth ache; if she had a heartbeat, it would pulse in two parts of her gums.

She grabs Sarah’s wrists, slams Sarah up against the disheveled wall of a building, presses her mouth to Sarah’s hand. The sound she makes when she tastes Sarah’s blood is animal and terrifying. Rachel never made sounds like that, before Sarah. Hundreds of years without sound. She worries her tongue under the flap of dangling skin, feels Sarah’s terrified heart sending small spurts of blood towards Rachel’s mouth. She doesn’t bite. She’s not an animal. She doesn’t bite.

Sarah – stupid, clumsy, beautiful Sarah – shoves a thigh between Rachel’s legs and rocks it upwards.

Rachel pulls herself away from Sarah’s hand. She raises her eyebrows skeptically.

Sarah rolls her thigh up again; her hips move forward, she raises her eyebrows back.

“You’re an adrenaline addict,” Rachel murmurs, and she leans in and kisses Sarah’s mouth. 

Sarah moans confirmation into Rachel’s mouth, kisses Rachel like something starving. Rachel shifts her grip on Sarah’s wrists to just one hand, lets her other hand trail lightly down Sarah’s shirt. Her rib cage. Rachel could dig her fingernails in, pull down, and spill Sarah out into the street. It would be a feast. 

Sarah bites Rachel’s lip. Obligingly, Rachel bites Sarah’s lip back; the kiss tastes like blood, and Sarah – Sarah – Sarah. Rachel curls her thumb over the waistline of Sarah’s pants and strokes the pad of her thumb against the skin she finds there.

“Sarah,” she murmurs.

“Rachel,” Sarah snaps back. “Don’t know what you think I’m gonna do when you’re holding me down.”

“That wasn’t what I was asking.” She can feel the skin over Sarah’s hipbone growing goosebumps. Sarah’s breathing is manic, hiccuping.

“Fine,” Sarah says, like it doesn’t mean anything. Her voice is wet and wanting. They both know it means something, anything, everything.

“Good girl,” Rachel says. She flicks open the button, pulls down the zipper, slides her fingers in – there – and presses her mouth to Sarah’s throat, and bites down.

Really she considers it conditioning. She wants Sarah to look at Rachel and think  _sex_  and think  _teeth_  in the exact same way. She wants Sarah to want this – all of it. She wants Sarah to touch herself with two fingernails digging into her throat. She doesn’t want Sarah to be able to orgasm without breaking skin.

Sarah’s hips buck; she’s yowling like an alleycat, her fingers scrabbling at Rachel’s iron grip. If Rachel was an animal she’d be purring. She isn’t an animal. Sarah’s blood lights her up the way that electric lights lit this city up, when electricity and the city and Rachel were all new. Sarah lights her up like the very first light switch. She tastes like the invention of everything real.

She says Rachel’s name when she comes. Good. Rachel unlatches from Sarah’s throat, licks away the blood that’s welling up, releases Sarah’s hands so Sarah can claw at the back of Rachel’s dress. Sarah bows her face into Rachel’s shoulder. She huffs for breath. “Shit,” she gasps, “shit, holy shit.” Her legs are weak. Rachel can credit herself for that, no matter why they’re trembling.

She kisses the soft thin skin under Sarah’s ear. When Sarah is washing off, later, she’ll find the rose-shaped mark of her own blood there.

“Tired already, are we,” Rachel murmurs. 

“Shut your bloody mouth,” Sarah says, and then realizes what she’s said, and then goes quiet. Rachel wishes she could see Sarah’s face; she’s probably blushing. She could lean in and put her tongue to it. She could taste Sarah’s blood surging up to meet her through the skin.

Rachel scoops Sarah up into a bridal carry and keeps walking down the street. “You’re lucky the others are weak,” she says. “It’s hard to imagine anyone being frightened of you.”

Sarah flips her off. She’s wriggling in Rachel’s grip like an impatient puppy, swinging those weaponized combat boots every which way. “I’m not a kid,” she says. “Christ. Put me  _down_ , I can walk, you aren’t half the bloody Casanova you think you are.”

Rachel doesn’t put her down. “We are in my area of town,” she says. She lets the offer hang.

“Wasn’t on purpose,” Sarah says. “Rachel, you piece of shit–”

There is no way to tell Sarah that her heartbeat is miraculous without sounding like a drunkard. It is miraculous. The idea of a heart, moving blood efficiently through every piece of Sarah – it overwhelms. Rachel would be content spending a day pressing a fingertip to each part of Sarah’s body, feeling the blood pumping through. Sarah would be bored, though. Impatient. Horrified. She’d cave in Rachel’s foot with the heel of her boot and leave – and then Rachel would have to track her down, which would be messy and unfortunate.

She puts Sarah down. Sarah’s heartbeat leaves her as Sarah shakes herself out, flips her hood up, scowls. It’s adorable. She walks with the staggering wariness of a woman in six drinks deep. Or a woman who’s just orgasmed. Or one with considerable blood loss.

“Why are you still here,” Sarah says. 

“I’m walking you home,” Rachel says conversationally. “This is a dangerous area, Sarah. You wouldn’t believe the sorts of things that come out at night.”

Sarah turns her head just a bit to watch Rachel. She’s frowning. The blood on her neck is drying in the dark.

“You’re terrible,” she mutters, and turns back around. She keeps walking. She doesn’t make any move to keep Rachel from walking next to her – so Rachel walks next to her in a satiated silence. She knows the way back to Sarah’s apartment; she lets Sarah pretend that she’s leading them there.

It takes a while to reach Sarah’s building – it’s a long walk, it isn’t anywhere near Rachel’s part of town. Sarah stops Rachel once to grab her hips, kiss her mouth, hold her in the middle of the street. Her heart beats like a mad drum against Rachel’s empty ribcage.

Besides that, the walk is silent. They don’t see anyone. Probably for the best – if they saw another vampire Sarah would fight him, and Rachel would kiss her, and overall the adrenaline rush would go on for far too long.

They reach Sarah’s building eventually. Sarah pauses in front of the door, shrugs a shoulder, says: “Well. Yeah.”

“Eloquent.”

“Don’t know what you expected.”

“I expected precisely that,” Rachel says. “That doesn’t mean I can’t comment on it.”

She tilts her head to the side. “You could call me, next time. I’ve given you my telephone number.”

“I don’t need you,” Sarah says.

“That wasn’t what I offered.”

“Bye,” Sarah says. She punches her combination into the keypad by the door, grabs the handle, swings it open. Her face is a muddle of confusion and anger and hope.

Rachel grabs her other hand, presses her mouth to Sarah’s bloodied knuckles in something that might be a kiss. She lets the hand go. She takes a step back, out into the night city. “Until next time,” she says.

Sarah steps inside, lets the door swing shut behind her. Rachel listens to the sound of her banging up the stairs until even her own sharp ears can’t detect it, and then she turns on one heel and walks away.


	42. Eldritch

Rachel could demand that the temperature in the basement be one hundred and twenty degrees, and the water in the tank would still be ice-cold. That’s fine. It’s only a problem when she’s sitting on the edge of the tank, legs in the water, feeling her bones go numb. After long enough under the surface she forgets to be frightened.

Right now she’s sitting on the edge of the tank, and she’s frightened. The tank is the size of an Olympic swimming pool – objectively. Factually. Rachel has never seen the bottom of it; the water inside is too dark, a merciless inky black.

After long enough under the surface she’ll forget to be frightened.

She sucks in a breath through her nose and lets herself slip into the water.

Her entire body shrieks cold at her – her skin clings to her bones, her bones spark against each other. She needs to breathe she needs to breathe she needs to run  _something else is in the water_ –

She digs her fingernails into her palms until blood spirals, thin and watery, out into the tank. It vanishes. She doesn’t need to breathe. She doesn’t need to get out of the water. She doesn’t need to be frightened.

 _It’s been ages_ , Sarah says.

“I was out of the country,” Rachel says.

Sarah touches Rachel’s ankle, the inside of her calf.  _And it was important_ , she says.

“Yes.”

_And you couldn’t miss it._

“Yes.”

_This isn’t important? Rachel?_

“Just do it,” Rachel says. “Stop wasting my time.”

 _I don’t think you’re scared enough_ , Sarah says.  _Of me_. She wraps around Rachel’s ribcage; Rachel’s bones creak out high lonely sounds.

“I would think that’s a novelty,” Rachel says.

 _It is_ , Sarah says, and then she sinks her teeth into Rachel’s head.

Metaphorically. It isn’t real. It’s just Sarah, rifling her hands through the endless album of Rachel’s memories, pawing for shiny objects. It’s not real. That means it doesn’t hurt. Rachel just has to float in the dark water of the tank and relive endless moments, sex and board meetings and meals and quiet sobs in bed with the lights out when she’s alone–

“Stop,” Rachel says.

Sarah pauses, and then plays the memory again. The tears touch Rachel’s cheeks. Salt water.

“ _Stop_ ,” Rachel says.

 _Do you want to change the deal?_ Sarah says.  _Rachel? Do you want new rules?_

Rachel doesn’t want new rules. She feels her misery squirming inside of her stomach; she feels Sarah feeling her misery, an endless dizzy echo-chamber. She wants. What does she want? She wants what Sarah has: unimaginable power. She wants Sarah out of her head. She wants Sarah to take all of her feelings, so she doesn’t have to experience them anymore. She wants to let Sarah go and then be Sarah, somewhere out there in the dark space beyond the stars.

 _It’s not that great_ , Sarah says.

 _Lonely_ , Sarah says.

Sarah pulls up one of Rachel’s memories and smooths it out, obsessively, pushes out all the wrinkles, makes it larger than life. It’s Tokyo. A crosswalk at night. The nightmare swarm of a million people, each with their own inanities, each stopping Rachel from reaching her destination.

Crowds are Sarah’s favorites. Crowds, alcohol, children, rock music. She’s obsessed with the irritants of life, only because she’ll never have to experience them.

So Rachel avoids crowds, mostly. She doesn’t drink. She’ll never have a child, and she only listens to classical music. She hates Sarah. There is no real way for Rachel to hurt Sarah, except by punishing herself.

Sarah tucks Rachel’s hair behind her ear.  _You’re such a bitch_ , she says, fondly.

“I didn’t teach you that word.”

 _No_ , Sarah says,  _you didn’t_. She digs deep into Rachel’s memories, carelessly flipping through years and years and years, sending sharp jolts of pain through Rachel’s skull. She lands on the funeral of DYAD’s previous director. Rachel watching the casket, Rachel’s hands folded tightly in front of her – the queasy mingling of triumph and grief – Sarah fast-forwards. An aide knocking on the door of Rachel’s brand-new office.  _Ms. Duncan, before you take the position, there’s something you should–_

 _I’m gonna miss you_ , Sarah says,  _when you’re dead. Bitch_.

There isn’t any possible response to that. Sarah doesn’t have feelings – at least not what Rachel would recognize as feelings. Sarah is starving for Rachel’s facsimiles of sorrow and joy because she’ll never know anything like them. Sarah was born in the space between two dead stars. She doesn’t know how to miss anything.

 _Maybe_ , Sarah says.  _But I’ll miss you._ Slowly, delicately, she opens up the memory of the funeral again. She watches Rachel have sex. She shows Rachel the memory of Rachel sitting on the edge of the tank, telling herself that she refuses to be frightened.

 _I’ll remember you, though_ , Sarah says.  _I remember all the others. I’ll remember you longer than anyone else ever will._

“Do you expect me to thank you?”

 _Don’t thank me_ , Sarah says.  _I’d die of fright, and then where’d you be?_

“Happy.”

 _You don’t know how to do that,_ Sarah says.  _If you knew how to do it you’d do it. You wouldn’t be working for DYAD. You wouldn’t be down here with me._

She brings Rachel back to Berlin. She walks Rachel, over and over again, past a dirty hole-in-the-wall dance club. Rachel feels Sarah watching, desperate, from the corners of Rachel’s eyes.

 _Could you?_ Sarah says.  _Just once_.

“What would you give me for it.”

_I’m already giving you everything you want._

“Everything _DYAD_ wants.”

 _Everything DYAD wants_ , Sarah says agreeably.  _Profits and monopolies and good luck and holes in the universe. Rachel, go dancing._

“Are we done?” Rachel says.

 _Punch someone_ , Sarah says.  _Do drugs. Jump off a cliff. Make mistakes._

It’s cold, under the water. It’s so cold that Rachel can’t feel it anymore – can’t feel anything but Sarah, touching her everywhere. It’s colder than she can survive.

 _Don’t do that_ , Sarah says.

Rachel’s heart rams itself up against her throat. She needs to breathe. She needs to breathe, desperately, now.

 _Rachel_ , Sarah says.

Rachel kicks her legs, thrashes herself up above the water. She sucks in a breath, then another breath, then another. She is shaking hard enough that the clash of her teeth is causing her physical pain. She can’t get out of the water. She can’t move her arms and legs; she can’t get out of the water.

Sarah pushes at Rachel’s legs, lifts her up until Rachel is able to grab with numb arms for the edge of the tank and pull herself up. She fumbles for a towel, and then for the heat packs. She pulls her feet out of the water and sits there and shakes. Every cell of her body burns with cold, and with loneliness – emerging from the tank feels like being alone the way that being born feels like being alone. There’s only the world, now, and Rachel inside of it. 

She stands up on the edge of the tank, finds the first ladder rung with her foot, slowly climbs the ladder down. She pulls the towel tighter around herself. She hears Sarah battering against the wall of the tank; instead of turning around, Rachel pulls the towel closer and walks away.


	43. Goddess/Mortal

There’s nothing special about Sarah. Sarah’s got battlefield dirt staining the lines of her palms red-brown, hair braided half out of her face, armor the same color as her hair, a sword stained the same color as her hands. She’s just all over red, and brown, and red. And nightmares. And the stink of smoke from sitting too close to the campfire, always.

They pulled kids for this war. Sarah can hear one of them now, puking in the dirt behind his tent, weeping and miserable. Sarah used to cry but Sarah also used to be shitty with a sword and neither of those things are really true anymore. She yanks another split end from her hair, flings it towards the fire. It doesn’t burn easy; it just vanishes into the smoke. Usually things die harder out here. Usually there’s more blood involved.

“I prefer meat,” says a voice from the dark of the camp. “Wine. Fruits and flowers. But these are desperate times.”

Sarah turns around, hand on the hilt of her sword, and meets the eyes of a woman standing directly behind her. She doesn’t fit here at all: there’s no dirt on her. She’s wearing clean cool white and her hair is blonde, short, neat. She’s got paint on her lips. Her feet are bare.

“May I sit?” says the goddess of war.

Sarah doesn’t say anything, and Rachel seems to take that as an invitation to sit next to Sarah. In the dirt. Her legs are folded underneath her; her skirt is unstained. Sarah hates her, suddenly, bitterly.

“Where’ve you been,” she says. “Where were you. We’ve been out here dawn to dusk fighting your shitty war and you won’t even give us a hello? You know how many of these idiots have prayed to you? You know how many of them  _died?_ ”

“Yes,” Rachel says. The firelight reflects in her eyes, light them up like Tartarus. Sarah looks back to the fire. Maybe if she stares at it long enough she’ll go blind.

“They were clumsy,” Rachel says. “Crude. This is a crude war. The powers that be, flinging their peasantry at one another…entirely up to numbers. A waste of resources, and utterly dull besides.”

“Then  _stop it_ ,” Sarah says. “Call a bloody storm. Kill a king. Walk into the middle of this stupid bloody battlefield and say  _hey, stop, I’m war and I don’t give a shit_. Let everybody go home, you sadistic psychopath.”

“I’d like to offer you a deal,” Rachel says, like she didn’t hear anything Sarah said.

“No.”

Rachel turns her head, very slowly, and looks at Sarah. The firelight is still in the rings of her irises, even though she isn’t looking at the fire anymore. Actually, thinking about it, Sarah isn’t sure the light was ever reflecting from the fire. The part of her brain that is still an animal in a cave says:  _run_. Sarah ignores it. She tightens her grip around the hilt of her sword, so tightly she can feel it marking her palm.

“No?” Rachel says.

“No,” Sarah says again. Her voice shakes, but the syllable is sure.

Rachel tilts her head just a little bit. “You don’t know what I’m offering you.”

“I know I don’t want it.”

“It would stop the war,” Rachel says. “You could stop the war. You could be a hero, Sarah Manning.”

“I’m not a hero,” Sarah says. “Le–”

“Of course you aren’t,” Rachel says smoothly. “And yet there is  _potential_  in you. If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

She leans in, close, too close. She’s warm. Her lips are red, in a way very few things are red. Dirt doesn’t get that color, except.

“I want you,” Rachel says. “Sarah.”

She reaches out and drapes her hand over Sarah’s hand on the sword – and – Sarah can see it, easy. Rachel’s sight laid over her own, like silver thread woven into a tapestry: the places to strike, the limbs to cut. Sarah would be beautiful, the way that a knife is beautiful when it’s used to cut open a sacrifice. Sarah would be a hero. They’d write songs about her. Rachel would be behind her the whole time, her warm burning palms on Sarah’s shoulders.

“I want–” Sarah says.

“I know,” Rachel says, and she leans forward and presses her lips gently against Sarah’s. Her hand is still on Sarah’s hand; Sarah’s hand is still on her sword. Rachel doesn’t move a single muscle. Her mouth against Sarah’s is a quiet invitation: if Sarah parted her lips, she would let Rachel in. She would open up to Rachel in all the ways that matter.

Instead she opens her eyes. Rachel’s eyes are still open, studying her; Sarah looks past the fire, sees in the depths of Rachel’s irises the battlefield and the bodies on the battlefield and the crows, pecking at the bodies. War is ugly. War is a cruel and ugly thing.

Sarah leans back. When she licks her lips clean, she tastes iron and dirt and the color red.

“I’m not interested,” she says.

“You’ll die here,” Rachel says. Her voice is smooth and empty of feeling. “Your corpse will be trampled on by the boots of your brothers in arms, and the war will be unchanged, and no one will remember you. Do you realize that? Do you understand what it is you’re giving up?”

The taste of iron on the tip of Sarah’s tongue; the way it unfolds in her mouth like a strange and terrible flower. It isn’t too late. Rachel could still want her. Rachel does still want her. Rachel wants her to fight in this war – she wants Sarah to lie, and make it into something beautiful.

“No,” Sarah says. “This isn’t a game. You don’t get to treat it like one. I’m not gonna make this more  _fun_  for you. You’re bored? Tough shit. Stop the bleedin’ war then.”

“If I stopped the war,” Rachel says, “what would I be? And more importantly, perhaps: what would  _you_  be?”

“Happy,” Sarah says. “Alive. Clean.”

“The last one is true,” Rachel says. A smile pulls up the corner of her red mouth. “But I think the dust suits you.”

She stands up again, bends down to trail her warm clean fingers through the tangle of Sarah’s hair. “When you’re desperate,” she says, “call for me again.” She leans closer, smiles, says warmly: “I would like it very much if you begged.”

“I won’t,” Sarah says.

“We’ll see,” Rachel says. She walks off into the dark of the camp, skirt trailing through the dust. Her clothing is still clean. Her skin is still clean, and her hands are still clean, and the blood on her mouth is now staining Sarah’s lips. Sarah will never get rid of it. It won’t ever go away.

She turns back to the fire and stares at it, unblinking, until her eyes water and blur. She doesn’t want to see the way her hands are shaking.


	44. Middle schoolers

The second the door to Sarah’s room closes behind them, Rachel says: “I don’t want to be here.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “And I don’t  _want_  you here. So we’re even.”

“Good,” Rachel says. In the awkward silence that follows she puts her backpack down on the floor, and then – with a sigh of resignation – drops her sleeping bag. “I’m only here because my parents are going to be gone for the weekend and my mother is friends with your mother.”

“They’re both evil,” Sarah says glumly. She drops herself down on the bed and stares at the ceiling. “I hate them,” she says, after a moment of thought.

“Your mother is very nice,” Rachel says. “Once, she–”

“Shut  _up_ ,” Sarah says, and jabs at the speaker with her foot until it starts blaring Green Day at inhuman volumes.

Rachel mutters something in response, but Sarah can’t hear it. It would be cool if she could just ignore that Rachel’s here, but she can’t – it’s  _weird_  having Rachel Duncan in her room, shifting from foot to foot, tucking part of her over-straightened blonde hair behind her ear. It’s not like when Cosima comes over for a sleepover. It’s different than that, and it makes Sarah’s stomach do flips. God, Rachel’s probably giving her food poisoning just from  _being_  here.

Sarah’s floorboards start banging; Rachel jumps. Sarah groans and sits up so she can fiddle with the dial on her speaker and turn the volume down. “’t’s just my mom,” she says. “She’s banging on the ceiling. She’s a fascist.”

“You don’t know what that word means.”

“It means she’s part of the system,” Sarah says, and flops back down on the bed. “The stupid system. This whole country’s terrible, and so is America.”

“We’re all part of the system, Sarah,” Rachel says, and then she sits down on Sarah’s bed. She’s so stupid. There’s a loose thread in Sarah’s bedspread and Rachel is picking at it with one sparkly silver-painted fingernail.

…actually, the nail polish is sort of cool. But Sarah’s never going to tell her that.

“You’re such a know-it-all,” Sarah says, and then adds: “teacher’s pet.” She’s just parroting what the other kids say, but it works: Rachel flushes, pulls the whole string out of Sarah’s bedspread.

“You don’t even pay attention,” Rachel says. “You’re going to fail high school.”

“Good,” Sarah says. “I don’t even want to go to high school. I’m gonna run away and start a band.”

“With what musical talent.”

“Shut  _up_ ,” Sarah says, and flops back down.

* * *

After like three hours of Sarah lying there and staring at the ceiling, Rachel sighs and goes to her backpack. Sarah hears it unzip, and then hears the sound of turning pages. She wants to ask what Rachel is reading, but that would be dumb, and the book is probably dumb, and really she doesn’t even want to ask what Rachel is reading. So she just lies there. The CD loops. She doesn’t actually know any of the words to this CD, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t agree with literally everything it’s saying.

When Sarah tilts her neck a little bit, she can see Rachel’s hunched shoulders under the stupid blouse she’s wearing like their stupid school even has a stupid uniform. She can’t see the cover of the book, but if she–

She crashes to the floor. “ _Fuck_.”

Rachel stares at her like Sarah has set off a grenade, and the grenade was made of boystink. She opens her mouth and then Sarah says: “Shut  _up._ ” She sits up, stretches out her legs across the floor. “What’re you reading.”

“You know you aren’t supposed to say that,” Rachel says.

“Fuck shit fuck,” Sarah says. “Shit. Ass.”

Rachel purses her lips in what is actually a really good impression of Sarah’s mom. “ _Rachel_ ,” Sarah says. “Don’t be stupid. What are you  _reading_.”

Rachel wordlessly holds up her book. It says  _Pretty Little Liars_.

“Isn’t that a TV show.”

“Yes,” Rachel says, “but I’m reading the book, because I’m not an  _imbecile_.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Sarah says. “ _Whatever_.” She pushes herself away from Rachel and then stands up. “I’m going to go play  _video games_.”

“Enjoy yourself,” Rachel says, without looking up. Her shoulders are up to her ears.

“I  _will_ ,” Sarah says, and storms out.

* * *

Sarah’s mum is out doing Siobhan-stuff, so there’s no one to stop Sarah from taking up the whole couch and playing  _Call of Duty_  for like eight hours. She murders every single bad guy. She’s the best. She doesn’t even feel bad about leaving Rachel upstairs, because they hate each other. And Rachel didn’t even want to talk to her anyways. So whatever.

It gets dark outside and Sarah just keeps killing guys and then Rachel’s voice says: “You’re going to rot your brains out.”

Sarah jumps. Her shot goes wild and then an enemy soldier kills her and she dies, like, for real, and then she turns around and says: “Why do you care?”

“I don’t,” Rachel says. In the dark Sarah can’t see her face. 

“Good,” Sarah spits. She gets up from the couch and fumbles for the light switch. When it turns on she makes a sound of pain, has to rub at her eyes; while she’s doing that, Rachel says: “Where is Mrs. Sadler.”

“Out,” Sarah says. “I dunno.”

She looks up, blinks, Rachel is making an expression of wide-eyed horror. “I didn’t realize she’d be gone,” she says. “If my mother had known, she wouldn’t have…”

“It’s fine,” Sarah says. “I’m home alone all the time. I’m not gonna burn the house down or whatever. There’s, like,” she waves her hand at the kitchen “frozen meals, so, if you’re – hungry. Lemme know.”

“Fine,” Rachel says. “I’m not. Hungry.”

“Cool,” Sarah says. She stares at Rachel. Rachel stares at her.

“D’you wanna play Call of Duty,” Sarah says.

“What is that.”

“You shoot guys.”

“I’ve never used a console like that,” Rachel says stiffly. “We don’t even have a television.”

“You  _what?_ ”

Rachel shrugs her shoulders, hunches in on herself. “They’re bad for you.”

“Come on,” Sarah says, “I’m gonna kick your arse.”

Rachel makes the pinched face again.

“ _Arse_ ,” Sarah says. “Arse arse arse.”

“I hate you,” Rachel says. Sarah laughs.

* * *

It turns out Rachel is actually really good at sniping people, after the first six times when she dies and Sarah teabags her corpse. They make a good team.

It’s weird.

It’s just really weird. Cosima hates playing  _Call of Duty_  and when she plays other games with Sarah she talks, like, a lot? Sarah had Alison over for a sleepover once and she got  _really_ into the game; she hissed threats at the enemy soldiers and everything.

Rachel’s just. Quiet? She doesn’t say anything, and Sarah doesn’t say anything, and it’s weird because it isn’t weird. They’re a team. They’re really good.

Also Sarah sprawled over at one point because she’s better at getting headshots when she’s lying down (it’s  _totally_  science, even if Cosima doesn’t think so) and her leg sort of sprawled over Rachel’s leg and Rachel didn’t do anything, she just rested her controller on Sarah’s shin, and it’s weird, because Rachel should stop Sarah from doing anything like that, because they hate each other. But she doesn’t. And she’s warm, under Sarah’s leg.

Sarah’s character dies and she drops the controller, turns her head to watch Rachel in the dark. Rachel’s face is focused on the screen, eyes narrowed, mouth frowning; the game lights her face up, but not a lot. She’s actually really pretty. People can be pretty and you can still hate them, though. Like Rachel, who’s pretty. Sarah still hates her. Even though her eyelashes are long and her lips look soft and her hair is nice with part of it tucked behind her ear. Sarah can still hate her. That’s normal.

Rachel singlehandedly carries them to victory, and Sarah feels that food poisoning ache come on again. She rolls onto her back and throws her other leg over Rachel’s lap.

“This makes my eyes hurt,” Rachel says. It’s the first thing either of them have said in a really long time.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “It’s bad for you. We should probably take a break or somethin’.”

“Probably,” Rachel says. 

Sarah picks up her controller. They start another round.

* * *

After the grenade finishes going off, Sarah’s stomach growls. It’s really loud. Onscreen a bunch of people are screaming and that doesn’t even cover it up.

“You should eat something,” Rachel says, without looking away from the screen.

“Piss off,” Sarah says.

They finish the round. Rachel puts down her controller, rotates her wrists and frowns at them like she didn’t know they could hurt. “Eat,” she says. “You’re not helping me when you’re hungry.”

“Ugh,” Sarah says. She drops her controller on her stomach and lies there. Rachel has both of her forearms resting on Sarah’s knees. There isn’t a good way to tell Rachel that.

Sarah yanks her legs away, fast, stands up. “Come on,” she says. “You can have the gross pasta or the gross chicken. Whatever one I don’t want.”

“I–” Rachel says, and Sarah yells behind her: “I’m taking the gross pasta.”

“ _Fine_ ,” Rachel says. 

* * *

They’re on the couch eating gross frozen meals out of plastic containers when S gets home. Sarah’s playing them  _Nightmare Before Christmas_  only because Rachel hasn’t seen it, which is  _unbelievable_.

“Hello, chickens,” S says.

“Oi oi,” Sarah says. She doesn’t look away from the screen, because at some point she’s sort of melted against Rachel and if Sarah doesn’t move at all Siobhan probably won’t notice it.

“Hello, Mrs. Sadler,” Rachel says. 

“You can call me S, love,” says Sarah’s mom, dropping her things by the door and coming in. “I see we’re watching something meant for our age group for once, Sarah?”

“It’s a good movie,” Sarah mutters.

“Thank you for having me,” Rachel says.

“Of course,” S says, and goes off towards the other room. Onscreen Jack is singing and Sarah whispers: “Fascist.”

Rachel actually snorts. When she does her hand moves, a little bit, so it’s sort of lying near Sarah’s hand, and their fingers are sort of touching. Like, sort of. A little bit. Rachel’s full of diseases – she’s got food poisoning and also some sort of heart condition and they’re both contagious and now she’s given Sarah all sorts of awful stuff, and Sarah’s going to be sick forever, and her heart is pounding desperately, and onscreen it’s Christmas and there’s magic everywhere and Sarah doesn’t want to look to see if Rachel’s smiling.

* * *

Rachel wears full-on long-sleeved white pajamas to bed, like an old man from a fairy tale, and her sleeping bag smells like somebody’s attic. She spreads it out at the foot of Sarah’s bed. Sarah fiddles with the bottom of her old gym shorts, listens to the rustling and Rachel’s breathing until she figures out if Rachel has settled.

“I’m turning off the light,” she says.

“Fine,” Rachel says. Her voice is really small, in the dark.

The light goes off. The dark settles over them like a thick blanket.

“Oh,” Rachel says.

“What.”

“Your room gets very dark.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. Then: “Wait, are you – are you scared of the dark?”

“…no.” Then Rachel says, quickly: “Only children are scared of the dark, and I’m not a child.”

Sarah fumbles for the lamp, stops with her hand still reaching towards it. There’s no rustling sounds. Rachel is lying very still.

“Sorry we made you sleep on the floor,” Sarah says.

“It’s fine.”

“You can come up here,” Sarah says. “If you want.”

“…I’m fine.”

“This is stupid,” Sarah says. “Just come up here. I won’t tell anyone.”

There’s a moment of silence where Sarah thinks Rachel isn’t going to move, and then there’s some scuffling as Rachel tugs herself out of her sleeping bag. The covers of Sarah’s bed lift up. Rachel scoots in. “If you tell anyone,” she says, “I’ll kill you. I’ll stab you and then hide the knife. No one will know it was me.”

“Jesus,” Sarah says.

Sarah’s bed is actually too small for two people, so Rachel’s dumb bony knee is shoved up into Sarah’s leg and Sarah can smell her own shampoo from where Rachel used her shower. Probably nobody has ever seen Rachel without her straightened hair before. Sarah could take a picture and then show everybody.

“You’re so weird,” she says. Her heart is up in her throat. “I’m not gonna tell anyone.”

“Good,” Rachel says, very quietly. She shifts around. Her foot nudges against Sarah’s foot. Sarah nudges Rachel’s foot before she can think too much about it.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

“Sarah.”

“I don’t hate you.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. 

“Sorry,” Sarah says. “That was weird.”

“It wasn’t,” Rachel says. “Weird. I don’t hate you either.

“This is the first sleepover I’ve ever had,” she says.

Sarah sits up. “Seriously?”

Rachel rolls over, towards Sarah; her eyes are the only bright part of her in the dark. “Yes.”

“So you’ve never – not for anyone’s birthday party, or anything?”

“No.”

“You’ve never played video games.”

“No.”

“You’ve never played – Spin the Bottle, or Truth or Dare, or anything?”

“No.”

Sarah folds her knees up to her chest. “You ever kissed anyone?” she says. She tries to make it sound casual and instead she just sounds like a complete loser whose heart lives up in her neck for some dumb reason.

“I haven’t,” Rachel says. “Have you?”

“Yeah,” Sarah says, and then – before she can think about it, before she can stop herself from being stupid – “You can kiss me. If you want.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It wasn’t even a joke,” Sarah says. “Just, like. If you want. You’re – you know. Could be fun. To try it. With you. You know?” God, she can’t shut up, she’s going to–

Rachel sits up. It’s still dark in Sarah’s room, and Sarah can just see the weird ghost-glow of Rachel’s stupid pajamas and the vague outline of Rachel’s face.

“Don’t laugh,” Rachel says.

“I won’t,” Sarah says. Her mouth is dry. She reaches forward and grabs Rachel’s face; it’s soft, really soft, her skin is really really soft. And warm. “Just – don’t move,” she says. “I haven’t done this a lot.” And she leans forward and presses her mouth to Rachel’s.

Tastes like toothpaste. Just toothpaste. Not anything else. Rachel must have spent forever brushing her teeth. Her mouth is rigid against Sarah’s, but her lips are soft and Sarah’s heart is pounding and it’s pretty good. Considering it’s Rachel.

Sarah leans back. “You can move your  _mouth_ ,” she says. “Just don’t headbutt me or anything.”

“Oh,” Rachel says. She scoots closer to Sarah – puts her hand on Sarah’s leg – kisses Sarah again. This time it’s – really different, like, just – it’s just different. Rachel’s a fast learner. Her lips are so, so soft. Sarah grabs for Rachel’s arm. It’s warm under her palm. Her pajamas might be silk or something. They’re really soft too. 

They’re so close now that Rachel’s chest is sort of brushing against Sarah’s chest and Sarah wants her to be everywhere, all over. It’s too much. She wants it forever.

They stop kissing eventually and Sarah rests her head on Rachel’s shoulder. “Wow,” she says. “Cool. That was – that was cool. It’s usually not like that? I guess you’re just good at it.”

She can feel Rachel being smug.

“Or I’m just really good at it,” Sarah says. Rachel huffs out a puff of breath through her nose in a way that says  _yeah but probably not_.

“We should try it again,” Sarah says. “Later.” She holds her breath.

“Tomorrow?” Rachel says. 

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Cool.” She needs to stop saying  _cool_. Her mouth tastes like Rachel’s toothpaste. She really wants to touch Rachel’s shoulderblades through her white silk pajamas.

“Yes,” Rachel says. She twists her head, presses her mouth to Sarah’s cheek. “Good night,” she whispers.

“‘night,” Sarah says. She lies back down, considers the thumping of her heart. Licks her lips. Tries to breathe evenly so she doesn’t seem like a total and complete idiot.

Rachel’s hand finds hers in the dark, squeezes. Sarah squeezes it back.


	45. High school first date

Sarah pulls up her clunking, rattling beast of a truck at two minutes past 5pm. Rachel knows this because she has been checking her phone, incessantly, obsessively, for the four minutes she’s been sitting here. The only relief has been picking off a smear of paint near her thumbnail with a single-minded focus. An unreasonably large part of her assumed Sarah wouldn’t show up, and Rachel would have to call her parents for a ride home from school. Despite all odds: here’s Sarah.

“Hey,” Sarah yells out of the truck, as if Rachel could have possibly missed her arrival.

“You’re–”  _late_ , is Rachel’s first instinctive barb. “–here,” she finishes instead. She stands up from the bench, slings her bag over her shoulder, climbs awkwardly into the passenger’s seat. Shuts the door. Buckles her seatbelt.

“Sorry,” Sarah says. “It’s a mess.” She gestures vaguely to the inside of the truck with a flip of one hand. “Throw your shit wherever.”

Rachel puts her bag between her legs. She squeezes it, slightly, with both knees. “So,” she says. “Is there a reason you wouldn’t tell me where we’re headed?”

“Didn’t want to give you a chance to bail,” Sarah says, and sends the engine thrumming again so she can pull them onto the road.

“I wouldn’t have,” Rachel says. She watches the blur of the road. It’s dark. If Sarah takes them to dinner – somewhere with a white tablecloth, fast food, any possible option – Rachel will have to leave. She can’t imagine sitting across a table from Sarah Manning. She can’t imagine Sarah Manning looking at her with anything resembling sincerity or softness.

“Me either,” Sarah says. “Not that you thought I would, just – hey, I didn’t know we had an art club.”

“We do,” Rachel says, to cover the awkward scuffle of Sarah’s words. “It meets after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” She should say  _if you’re interested_ , but she won’t – she loves the art room when it’s her and the instructor and the three other students Rachel doesn’t recognize, all of them in silence, working, cut off from one another. It’s the only thing in this school worth keeping.

Well.

It  _was_  the only thing.

She really had thought there’d only be one. She hadn’t expected Sarah Manning, of all people, to find her during lunch period and say–

“–if I’m bein’ honest.”

Rachel blinks herself back to the present. “Excuse me?”

“I didn’t mean–” Sarah says. She sighs through her teeth. Rachel feels a sour stab of regret: she’s being cruel. Without even meaning too, which is the hilarious part.

“I know,” she says quietly. “I didn’t think you meant anything.”

“Veera’s into art,” Sarah says. “’n Fe. But you’re just…dunno.”

Rachel catches up, finally. “Maybe I like it because it makes no sense for me to like it.”

Sarah huffs out a laugh. Rachel can imagine the corner of her mouth curling up, the flash of her teeth in the light; when she turns her head to look at Sarah, she finds that it’s true. Sarah’s eyes flick to meet hers. Rachel could look away; Rachel doesn’t look away.

“‘t’s cool,” Sarah says. “Screw ‘em for tryin’ to put you in a box, yeah?”

“I could say the same for you,” Rachel says. She watches a frown furrow itself between Sarah’s eyebrows, and then Sarah mutters  _shit_  and hastily pulls the truck into a metered spot. Turns it off. Outside: downtown, the streetlights on in the dark. 

“Know I’ve got–” Sarah mutters. She slings herself out of the truck like it’s easy, dumps out the pockets of her leather jacket onto the driver’s seat: a handful of quarters, a matchbook, a pocketknife, a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it. For a moment Rachel thinks the scribbled digits belong to a phone number and her heart sinks teeth into itself. Then she realizes, and feels like an idiot.

Sarah grabs the quarters in one hand, shoves the rest of the mess back into her pockets. “C’mon,” she says, and slams the truck door. 

Rachel lets herself out. It’s colder than she expected. Stupid of her to not bring a jacket. She folds her arms around herself, watches Sarah feed the meter. The way Sarah shifts her weight from foot to foot – Rachel has noticed it for years, offhandedly, but now she notices it in a new way.  _This could be mine_. It could be a tic that she notices, and that could make it hers.

Sarah turns around and frowns at her. “You cold?” she says. 

Three barbs rise to Rachel’s tongue and she swallows them and they scratch open her throat and it’s fine. “I’m fine,” she says.

“No you’re not,” Sarah says. She walks around to the back of the truck, pops it open, rummages around and procures a pilling sweater. It used to be black, probably; now it’s just grey. “Here,” Sarah says. “If you want.”

Rachel looks from the sweater to her thin grey dress and then back again; she can’t stop the corner of her mouth from twitching up. She takes the sweater. She pulls on the sweater. It’s very warm, and it smells like whatever scent Sarah wears – slightly spiced, a little dark.

When she looks at Sarah, she sees that Sarah is also fighting a smile. “Don’t,” Rachel says. “Let me pretend to have dignity.”

Sarah raises her hands, splays them:  _sure, fine_. Then she shoves her hands in her pockets and starts walking.

Rachel follows, then catches up. There’s something strangely intimate about the city at night. Part of her thinks that this entire night will be Sarah leading her up and down sidewalks; she finds that she doesn’t really mind it.

“‘t’s a few blocks,” Sarah says. “You still cold?”

“Are you?”

Sarah lifts a shoulder, lowers it again. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Rachel says, the syllable foreign and round in her mouth. She thinks she draws the  _h_  of it out too long.

“What’d you mean? Earlier. When you said, y’know. I could say the same for you.”

“Ah,” Rachel says. They walk in silence past the next shop – dark windows, black glass. She says: “I didn’t mean it as an insult.” She says: “You try so hard to convince us all that you’re not clever. That you can’t amount to anything. But – you pay attention. You see things that no one else sees, Sarah. You understand things the rest of us don’t.

“That’s all I meant,” she finishes.

“Oh,” Sarah says. Then: “I’m not – smart, though. Not like that, I won’t – I’m not gonna get A marks in my classes or anything. I’m sort of an idiot.”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Piss off,” Sarah says. She scuffs a foot against the ground as they walk. “Not seriously,” she adds.

“I know.”

“Good.”

They’ve passed a few shops that are still open, and Sarah stops in front of the latest one. “C’mon,” she says, and grabs Rachel’s hand, and drags Rachel inside before she can see what the shop is.

Inside: a bookstore. Used, possibly, possibly antiques – the air smells musty and warm. There isn’t anyone inside, besides the two of them; there’s only the claustrophobic press of overstuffed shelves.

“Surprise,” Sarah says. She runs her free hand through her hair. “I know I should’ve – taken you to dinner, or somethin’, but that just seemed. Bloody unbearable, no offense. So. Yeah. Dunno if you’ve been here, they’ve got weird shit. Thought you’d like it, ‘cause you can show off how smart you are.”

It’s very warm in the store, which is why Rachel’s face is also warm. She lets her eyes sweep over the cracked and faded spines and – without looking – tangles her fingers with Sarah’s. It’s only after their hands are laced that she looks back. “Well,” she says. “I am  _very_  smart.”

Sarah bursts out a laugh, wide enough to stretch her face open. “And you’re a bitch,” she says.

“I’m only repeating what you told me,” Rachel says.

“Sure,” Sarah says. “Bitch.”

They’re smiling at each other, like idiots.

Rachel moves towards the section labeled MYTHOLOGY/POETRY/THEATER. If Sarah follows along, that’s coincidental; if Sarah’s hand is warm in hers, that’s just as coincidental as the first. She slows down by a collection of compendiums – Hamilton, Bulfinch, Apollodorus. “I was raised on these,” she offers.

“Never read ‘em,” Sarah says. “We talked about one of ‘em in 9th grade English, yeah? The one with Death stealing that girl.”

“Persephone,” Rachel murmurs. With her free hand she pulls a book from the shelf, tilts it open. It’s densely packed with someone else’s notes. A college student, judging from the number of question marks.

“Help me turn the page,” she says. Sarah makes a low snorting sound but steps closer (her side is pressed to Rachel’s) to reach over and turn the page with her open hand. Rachel keeps having to renegotiate the way she’s holding the book, and Sarah is laughing, and Rachel is going to laugh. She can’t stop herself.

“This is so  _stupid_ ,” Sarah mutters.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Incredibly. Keep turning.”

“No,” Sarah says. “This is stupid.” She plucks the book out of Rachel’s hand and shoves it under her armpit, pulls Rachel further down the row. “Wanna see if they’ve got smut, c’mon.”

“Really?” Rachel says. “Here? Now?”

Sarah stops. She turns around. Her face is a little pink, just on her cheekbones. “Shit,” she says. “I mean. No.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Rachel murmurs. Her heart is a trapped bird. She swallows, says: “I’d like to kiss you. If that’s alright.”

Sarah’s eyes go very wide – she blinks – she licks her lips, one nervous swipe of tongue – she nods. Her hand falls loose of Rachel’s hand and both of her hands clench and unclench into fists.

Rachel could look at her for a long time, but that’s dangerous; instead she closes the space between them so she can finally, finally kiss Sarah’s mouth.

Sarah’s lips part when Rachel kisses her; her hands curl around Rachel’s waist. Rachel cups Sarah’s face in two hands. The edge of the mythology book digs into Rachel’s wrist – the book that Sarah is still holding for Rachel, the one they held in both of their hands. Everything smells like warmth and cinnamon and old pages and dust.

Sarah steps forward – forward – and Rachel’s spine presses to those other paper spines. She makes a soft small sound. She reaches around Sarah to tangle her hands in Sarah’s hair, pull Sarah closer.

Sarah makes a frustrated noise and pulls back. Rests her forehead against Rachel’s. “Shit,” she says. “Here? Now?”

“Shut up,” Rachel says, and kisses her again. Sarah lets out a complaining whine but lets herself be thoroughly kissed. She strokes her thumbs along the curves of Rachel’s hipbones and Rachel – Rachel – Here? Now? Yes, absolutely yes.

Sarah leans back again and the two of them watch each other, eyes wide and bright. “You want to look at more books?” Sarah says. “There’s a shitton of books.”

“Not especially,” Rachel says. She tucks a piece of Sarah’s hair behind her ear: hers. 

“Fine,” Sarah says. “I’m getting you this one, though.”

Rachel blinks at her. “No you aren’t,” she says, intelligently.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “I am. Chivalry.” She grins in a way that makes the word a joke – a shared joke, just for the two of them.

“You really are exceptionally chivalrous,” Rachel says. “Buying me things. Preventing me from catching chill.” She reaches for Sarah’s hand again, and Sarah lets her take it, and they’re holding each other’s hands, and this is ridiculous. She wants it, though. She desperately wants it.

“That’s me,” Sarah says. She tugs Rachel deeper into the shop, towards some mythical cash register. “And I’m buying you dinner.”

“I’m capable of pa–”

“No you aren’t,” Sarah says. “Left your wallet in the car, yeah?”

Oh. “Clever.”

“I know,” Sarah says. She pulls Rachel forward. She’s clever and she’s Rachel’s and she’s holding a book for Rachel under her arm and Rachel is wearing her sweater and ahead of them the bookshelves stretch on, forever, bursting at every edge with possibilities.


	46. Apocalypse

Everyone wants to talk to Sarah, once she gets back to camp – people want to know if she got bandages, medicine, soap. She says the same thing every time:  _everything’s with Alison, check with her, I did what I could, it’s nasty out there_. Nobody wants to ask Alison, though. Everyone wants to ask Sarah. But Sarah’s tired; she doesn’t want to give every single person here the hope that they need from her. So she ducks into the main house and jogs up the stairs. 

No one follows her, which doesn’t surprise Sarah at all.

At the top of the stairs there is only one occupied room, behind a closed wooden door with an eye carved on it. Sarah throws that door open without knocking and kicks it closed it behind her.

Rachel is sitting at her big wooden desk, back to the window, shuffling paperwork and frowning. The frown lines cut into her face, meeting the red angry edges where the eyepatch strap is digging too tightly into her forehead. She looks tired, and pissed off, and not as clean as she should be. Somehow she doesn’t look like shit – unlike the rest of them.

Sarah walks up to the desk and grabs a can of olives out of her coat pocket. She puts them next to Rachel’s hand, by the markings of shift leaders. “Here,” she says. “So we can all pretend you’re not just drinkin’ gin out of a martini glass.”

Rachel doesn’t say anything. Her hand tightens on her pen; she drags an angry line through Mark’s name and writes Paul’s instead. She used to wear lipstick every day, until they ran out of lipstick, and without it her mouth looks weird and small.

“Are you ignoring me now?” Sarah says.

Rachel doesn’t answer.

“Look,” Sarah says. She drops into the chair on the other side of Rachel’s desk. “I’m sorry I went on a raid without begging permission, alright? Is that what you want me to tell you?”

Rachel pushes the list of shift leaders off to one side, pulls a scribbled hand-written note out of the pile, frowns at that, flips the paper over and writes something on the back. She makes the elegant flourish of her signature. She puts it down. She picks up the next piece of paper.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

Rachel says nothing.

“Come  _on_ ,” Sarah says. “We needed it. You’re actin’ like a brat. Would it kill you to say thank you?”

The pen gouges a dark line across the desk, but Rachel’s face doesn’t move. “What do you think,” she says, “the camp would do without you.”

It isn’t the question Sarah was expecting. She laughs, uneasily, pushes the chair back onto its hind legs. “Uh,” she says. “I dunno. Cry?”

“They would starve,” Rachel says. She puts the pen down on the paper, folds her hands together, watches Sarah with her one hawk eye. “You somehow manage to retrieve more supplies than the rest of the other scavengers combined. You are the only thing keeping this camp alive, Sarah, and I  _know_  you aren’t stupid enough for this to be a surprise.”

Sarah lets the chair fall back down to four legs. Is it too late to leave Rachel’s office? Yeah, probably, Rachel is leaning forward and her stare is pinning Sarah down like a bug.

“There is a reason,” Rachel says, “for  _everything_  I do. The scavenging trips are scheduled for a  _reason_. The groups are selected for a  _reason_. There is a  _reason_ , Sarah, that I do not send you outside of this camp on your own.”

“I was  _fine_ ,” Sarah says.

“And what happens,” Rachel says, “when you aren’t fine?”

The sentence should be scathing and cruel and angry; Rachel probably meant it to tear Sarah to pieces. Instead Rachel’s voice wobbles on the last syllable, and they both have to sit there and live with that. Rachel’s face blazes through two or three quick huge feelings before she clears her throat and picks up her pen again.

“The next time you attempt to leave camp on your own,” she says, “I’ll have you restrained.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Sarah says. Slowly. Softly.

“Obviously I do.”

“I’m okay,” Sarah says.

“You’re free to go,” Rachel says. “Remember the consequences of your actions.”

“ _Rachel_ ,” Sarah sighs. She shoves the chair back, paces around the desk, and stands next to Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel keeps on not looking up from her paperwork, even though they both know there’s no way she’s paying attention.

“Would you look at me,” Sarah says.

Rachel sighs, like Sarah is hugely inconveniencing her, but she turns her chair around and tilts her chin up to look at Sarah.

Then Sarah leans down, cups Rachel’s chin in one hand, and kisses her.

There’s a good second and a half where Rachel tries to pretend she doesn’t give a shit before she groans, low in her throat, and grabs Sarah’s face with both hands. She pulls Sarah closer; she digs her nails into the edges of Sarah’s face. Hurts like a bitch. Sarah doesn’t stop kissing her. She lets her palm smooth down the line of Rachel’s neck and shoulder, and lets her hand rest on Rachel’s upper arm. Squeezes, once.

She keeps kissing Rachel until they’ve both started gasping for air, and then she breaks the kiss and lets their foreheads rest together. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’ll keep coming back.”

“You’d better,” Rachel says roughly. Her nails are still digging desperately into Sarah’s skin.

“Promise.”

Rachel laughs, a wet gurgle of a sound. “That isn’t something you can promise,” she says. “You idiot. You utter, complete imbecile.”

“Wow,” Sarah says. “See if I bring you olives after this.”

“Shut up,” Rachel says, and kisses her again.


	47. Fight club

There’s a woman sitting on the curb, one foot battering the ground, hands clenched in her hair. “Pull over,” Rachel tells her driver. He pulls over. He lets her into the street. He drives away. She comes closer to the – well the woman who, judging by the smell, is absolutely drunk. 

She tilts her gaze vaguely in Rachel’s direction, when Rachel gets close enough. Her eyes are bleary. There’s a smear of blood under her nose. When she says “Piss off,” the words slur messily between her teeth and drip down to the street. 

There’s blood on her knuckles, too.

“I have a business proposition for you,” Rachel says.

“You have a  _what_ ,” slurs the woman on the curb, and then she huffs a breath of amusement that stinks of whiskey and she hocks a bit of blood to the side of her boot. “I’m not gonna fuck you. Don’t do that. Go find a real fuckin’ prostitute, yeah?”

“I want you to fight me,” Rachel says. “I’ll pay you a hundred dollars.”

That makes her laugh. “No offense,” she says, “you wouldn’t last two bloody seconds. Barbie bitch.”

“I don’t care.”

The woman on the street looks up at that, for the first time. Her eyes reflect the streetlight and turn a nauseating yellow. They’re very sharp.

“Money first,” she says.

Rachel opens her purse, finds her wallet, counts out five twenties and holds them out in a demanding hand.

“Shit.”

“I’m very serious,” Rachel says.

“Yeah, can see that.” She stands up, pulls the money out of Rachel’s hand and shoves it into the pocket of her jacket. “You even know how to fight? Or ‘sthis how you get your rocks off. Gettin’ shitkicked.”

Rachel doesn’t answer. When she’s standing, the stranger is a scant inch or two shorter than Rachel; without Rachel’s stilettos, they’d be the same height. This close her irises still look too yellow.

“Guess it’s none of my business,” says the woman with blood on her face. She bares her teeth in something that might be a smile. “Bu–”

“Not here,” Rachel says.

“Then where.”

Rachel hadn’t thought that far; she’s sure it shows in her face.

The stranger snorts. “Fine,” she says. “I got a place. But that’s another twenty bucks, yeah?”

Rachel obligingly pays. This is in part because she can’t believe someone would go along with these orders, and in part because she respects the haggling.

“I’m Sarah,” says the stranger as she takes Rachel’s money. “Y’know. ‘fore I punch you.”

When Rachel doesn’t offer up her own name, Sarah snorts and stumbles off in the opposite direction of Rachel’s apartment building. Rachel hurries to keep up.

“So,” Sarah says. “Now that I’m actually doing this stupid, shitty idea. You ever fought anyone.”

“No.”

“Figured,” Sarah says, and then: “You want to be a punchin’ bag, eh?”

“No,” Rachel says. “I’d like to hurt you.”

Sarah flicks her another over-sharp glance and then looks back at the sidewalk in front of them. “No,” she says. “You want me to  _let_  you hurt me. That’s what you want. You don’t hurt me ‘less I let you.”

“Fine,” Rachel says. “Then yes.”

“Yes what.”

Rachel stares at Sarah. Sarah looks over at her without slowing her pace.

“Let me hurt you,” Rachel says.

Sarah snorts, shoves her hair out of her face with two hands and groans a low  _oooh_ sound. “I’m so drunk,” she says. “I gotta stop getting this drunk. I get talked into stupid shit. You’re too pretty. Fuck you.”

There isn’t a good answer to that. Thankfully, Sarah doesn’t seem to need a response; she just mutters to herself vaguely as she cuts a sharp left and leads Rachel down a staircase that sulks off under the sidewalk.

Sarah kicks in the door, underneath the handle. It bangs open and ricochets off the wall with a sad sound.

“Nobody comes here ‘cept to shag and get high,” Sarah says helpfully, and then she heads inside. Rachel follows her. It’s very dark, but Sarah seems to know where she’s going. She shoulders open another door and leads Rachel into a room that’s almost pitch black. There’s the guttering sound of a fuse struggling to light, and then a weary fluorescent light in the ceiling flickers on. It tints everything a shallow, sickly green.

Sarah turns back around in a gesture that would probably take her sober self one-third of the effort. “You really want this,” she says. “Really.”

“Yes.”

“You’re so stupid,” Sarah says. “Stupid bitch.” She pulls her hands through her hair again. “Take your bloody shoes off.”

She must catch Rachel’s scathing glance to the floor, because Sarah snorts and says “I’ve been naked on this floor before. ‘t’s fine. You’re not gonna die or end up high by accident, promise.”

Rachel puts her purse on the ground and then slowly toes her shoes off, lowers herself to Sarah’s level. Sarah has been naked on this floor before. The blurry, underwater image of Sarah’s back in this unreal light – the green shadow of her open mouth – her dark hair falling over her shoulders. The floor is cold under Rachel’s bare feet, and she hates it desperately.

Sarah tries to take her own boot off and wobbles. “Fuck,” she says. She has to sit on the ground to take her shoes off, and then her socks. Her feet are calloused; her toenails are too long, like a dog’s claws. She stands up again. She sighs through her teeth.

She’s really going to do it. Rachel’s heart rockets itself to a hummingbird pace, sending unfamiliar stings of adrenaline through her system.  _Oh_ , her body says.  _We’re doing something? We’re feeling something? This is real?_

 _Yes_ , she tells it.  _This is real_.

To Sarah, she says: “Not my face.”

“Bet you’ve got work tomorrow,” Sarah says. She prowls closer.

“Yes.”

“Great,” Sarah says, and punches Rachel in the stomach.

It hurts.

Rachel’s brain has no way to process the sudden dull cataclysm of being punched in the stomach – so it shuts off cataloguing entirely. She becomes a thing of raw sensation:  _I hurt_ , and  _I don’t want to hurt_ , and  _I want to hurt the thing that made me hurt_. The next few moments are an embarrassing blur of lunging at Sarah, claws and incompetent fists. She manages to rake bleeding lines in Sarah’s arm before Sarah elbows Rachel’s spine and Rachel hits the ground.

That also hurts. The fury is making Rachel’s skin shake.

“This is sad,” Sarah says. She sits down on the ground next to Rachel. “This is so–”

There’s a thud as Sarah lands on her back on the ground. Rachel is straddling her hips. She has her hands around Sarah’s throat.

“I want to kill you,” Rachel says. “I know nothing about you, but I’d like to kill you anyways. Do you think anyone would miss you?”

“Not really,” Sarah says. She mostly seems bored by all of this; Rachel slaps her in the face.

“You hit like a girl,” Sarah says.

Rachel hits her again.

“For bloody – make a bloody fist,” Sarah says. “ _Hit_  me. That’s what you paid me for, right? So you could–”

Then she says  _unh_  and doesn’t say anything at all. Rachel’s knuckles sting. Sarah’s cheekbone is turning colors.

“There you go,” Sarah says. Her voice is weirdly tender. Rachel rolls off of Sarah’s hips, sits back on the ground. The light turns the tips of her knuckles blue.

Sarah sits up, sucks blood in through her nose and spits it out on the ground. “Bony knuckles,” she says. She sounds approving.

“I want to do it again,” Rachel says.

“I bet you do,” Sarah says. “I want another drink. God.” She shoves herself back to her feet again, sways back and forth. She licks her finger and rubs it along the thin streaks of blood on her arm, only succeeds in smearing them more. “Shit,” she says.

Rachel stands up. Sarah flicks her eyes over in Rachel’s direction (in this light, the irises are a burnished gold) and says: “You’re still doing your fists wrong. Knuckles out. Punch the stomach, or the ribs, or the throat. Maybe. If you’re a psycho. Are you a psycho?”

“Not according to eight psychiatrists.”

“Shit,” Sarah says. Her vocabulary is limited, apparently. She licks her lips and says: “You can use this–” she taps the heel of her hand “too, that’s hard, it’ll hurt. Uh. Fight dirty, yeah? You did good, with the…” she trails off and digs the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “What am I doing,” she mutters. “What the hell am I–”

Rachel steps closer and crushes the heel of her foot against Sarah’s bare toes. When Sarah yowls, Rachel steps closer and socks her fist into Sarah’s stomach.

“ _Fuck_  you,” Sarah says, and punches Rachel hard in the shoulder. She shoves; when Rachel’s tailbone bangs against the ground, Sarah stomps the soft spot between Rachel’s hip and ribs. She’s breathing heavily. So is Rachel. The constant anger that thrums in Rachel’s throat is everywhere, now, warming her; she feels alive and snarling. She wants to pull out all of Sarah’s hair and break her bones and kiss her and give her one million dollars. She doesn’t want to stop.

So she stands up again, even though her body wails at it; she feints, she ducks back, she elbows Sarah’s chest and Sarah goes staggering. Rachel has no idea what she’s doing. She finds herself laughing as she reaches, bends, punches – hurts. Sarah lunges at her and hurts her back. It feels good. At one point Sarah bites Rachel’s upper arm and Rachel starts laughing so hard that she has to sit down again on the ground.

She can’t really remember the last time she laughed.

“This is ridiculous,” she says. “This is – this is–” She sucks in a breath. It burns going down.

“Are you – y’know,” Sarah says. “Okay.”

“Yes,” Rachel says. “Very much so. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me,” Sarah mutters. “I need bourbon. I need more – I need more bourbon. Fuck.”

“Then buy one hundred dollars’ worth of bourbon.”

“You gave me one-twenty,” Sarah says, a smug smile pulling her lips up above her teeth.

“Spend the other twenty on bandages.”

Sarah sputters and then starts laughing, a rough wild whoop that bangs off the terrible walls. “You’ve gotta work tomorrow,” she says, and then buries her face in her hands and keeps laughing. 

Rachel rolls her head back (it hurts) and stares into the bug-smeared light until her eyes water and her vision fills with spots. She says: “I’d pay you two hundred dollars to come back.”

Silence. The edge-of-the-teeth hum of fluorescents.

“One hundred,” Sarah says, “if you tell me why.”

“I’m so angry,” Rachel says. Her voice is small and tender, like the bruise spreading under her ribcage.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Me too.” She stands up, lowers her hand down so Rachel can grab it. Rachel stands. She was right: without her heels, they’re the same height.

“My name is Rachel,” says Rachel.

“Next Thursday,” Sarah says. “I’m bringing booze and we’re gonna get wasted and we’re gonna kick the shit out of each other.”

“Fine,” Rachel says. She’s still holding Sarah’s hand; it’s rough, it’s warm. 

“This is stupid,” Sarah says.

“Absolutely,” Rachel says. With her free hand she reaches up and cradles Sarah’s face; Sarah’s eyelashes flutter, slightly, and then Rachel digs her thumb into the wound on Sarah’s cheekbone.

Sarah makes a sound like  _oh_ , but rough around the edges. She doesn’t break eye contact with Rachel; her eyes are the sick color of a healing wound. She doesn’t move, except to dig her nails into Rachel’s other hand.

 _Mm_ , Rachel hums, and then she closes the distance between them to press her mouth gently to Sarah’s. She digs her fingernail into Sarah’s face. She curls her nails into Sarah’s hand. She’s alive, and Sarah is alive, and next Thursday Rachel is going to take off her two thousand dollar shoes and ram her bare foot into Sarah’s leg so she can bruise it. And then Sarah will bruise her back, and one of them will laugh, and Rachel will make it through this life she’s living one painful day at a time.

When she opens her eyes, she realizes she’s close enough to number Sarah’s eyelashes. In this light they may as well be uncountable.


	48. Siren/Sailor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [warnings for cannibalism and gore]

It takes Sarah a week to get her sea legs; she spends the first five days aboard vomiting into the ocean, and the last two days lying in a pile of sailcloth on the deck and feeling sorry for herself. On day seven she finally wobbles to her feet and takes a look around.

The ocean isn’t anything like the stories, because the stories can’t describe the size of it. It’s so big it makes Sarah dizzy; she sits down on the deck again, before she hurts herself. Eventually she works up the nerve to lean her head over the side of the ship and watch the ocean unwind itself like a never-ending bolt of the bluest fabric in the world.

Somewhere in that ocean there are sirens. And Sarah is going to find one, and then she’s going to kill it.

She doesn’t have a choice. It had cost all of her money and some of Fe’s besides to get her passage on this ship; the only reason Fe was willing to chip in was because Sarah  _promised_  him she’d bring back scales and hairs and a heart and – most importantly – the vocal cords, the silver harp-strings that let sirens lure men to their deaths. She’ll bring back a dead mermaid, and then she’ll take Fe to the capital and they’ll spend the rest of their lives drinking and singing and never having to worry again. The callouses on Fe’s hands will soften and crack and be gone. Sarah will – Sarah doesn’t know what she’ll do, but she’ll do something. She’s ready for it. She’s impatient for it.

…She gets more impatient when there’s no sign of anything even remotely exciting for the next three weeks.

The captain doesn’t seem relieved that there are no sirens, but then again maybe he doesn’t believe in them. Most people don’t. The ghost ships are easy to explain – a crew gone sea-mad, a fight and an unsuccessful plunder, starvation and suicide. Women in the ocean? Stupid. Unbelievable.

(But Fe brought Sarah a scale, once, so Sarah believes it.  _Stir soup with it_ , he’d said,  _trust me_ , and Sarah did, and then Sarah went out the next winter day and didn’t even have to wear a jacket. Her skin felt alive.

At night, she glowed. Just a little bit. Just for a little while. Then it faded again, but she wants it back. She wants more of it. 

She can’t eat a siren’s heart, because she’s got to sell it. But in her dreams–)

Women aren’t even supposed to be on board a ship, but Sarah bought her way here fair and square and has punched every man on this stupid boat who’s tried to convince her to pay in other ways. Now the crew mostly ignores her, and she ignores them. She paces back and forth across the deck, all day. At night she sleeps. 

She dreams about meat. 

In her dreams the mermaids never have faces, just rib cavities and a long coiled tail, and when Sarah bites into the heart she finally gets it. Whatever the hell she wants, she understands it. She’s finally a good person, and she laughs and she means it, and the roof of her mouth tastes like metal, 

and when she wakes up one morning the song has already stopped. 

(She won’t realize until later that there was singing in the first place, but there was. It sounded like a grieving whale and it sounded like glass windchimes and it sounded like a cold drip of water down your spine and to the crew on the deck of the ship it sounded like sex and fire. 

They made a splash, when they drowned, but Sarah didn’t hear that either.)

She wakes up when the yelling starts. She scrambles out of bed (even though there’s nothing she can do) (and she knows it) (and her heart is pounding as she tugs on her boots and stumbles as fast as she can up the stairs) and onto the deck, where half of the crew is missing. The ship has pitched off east of its intended direction, and everyone who was on night watch is gone.

“ _Shit_ ,” Sarah says, and makes for the railing.

She ducks under it, grabs it with one hand, rakes the ocean open with her eyes – nothing. No blood, no guts, no wink of scales. Fuck. Sarah’s heart beats rat-a-tat in her chest like a brand new drum, and she presses her palm to it until she slows.

Then she goes back to bed. She can’t help the crew anyways, and she wants to be awake tomorrow night.

She crawls out of bed a few hours past sun down; the deck is mostly empty, just one man playing a crude little metal flute to himself and keeping watch while another one slumps over the steering wheel. Sarah pulls her coat around herself and sits on the stern, waits. Her heart is thrumming.

A few hours later, the singing starts.

It raises the hairs on Sarah’s arms, makes her bones rattle. The two sailors on the deck come alive like they’ve been hit by lightning; one drops his flute, the other one stands up and digs his hands into the steering wheel. They’re both looking around for the sound. Sarah is too; she’s on her feet, looking everywhere, looking for a shock of light under the tide.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

And then one sailor jumps over the edge, hitting the ocean with a sound like a cannon. Sarah runs over there just in time to grab the other one by the neck of his coat, shake him a bit. “Mate,” she says. “Mate, what the  _hell_  are you playing at?”

“Let go of me,” he wails, “she needs me, she wants me, I have to–” and he wriggles out of his coat and is gone before Sarah can save his life. She drops down to a crouch, grabs the railings, watches as blood stains the water darker than she ever could have imagined. “Hey,” she roars. “ _Hey!_ ”

She can see the siren, is the thing, she can see the light in the water; everything is blood-black except for starry flickers of purple and silver light.  _Jump_ , Sarah’s body screams,  _jump in, before it’s too late_ , but a sailor’s leg bobs up to the surface before her idiot brain can give her a good enough reason to get in there. Instead she clutches the railings and yells: “I know you can hear me!”

Bits of what used to be people continue to float up to the surface, lazily. An ear bobs in quiet circles. Boot leather, coat leather – and then the mermaid surfaces, her head and shoulders lifting above the water.

And Sarah–

And Sarah believed in it, alright, them, her, she believed in the sirens, she’d seen – and she – but part of her wasn’t expecting. This. She wasn’t really expecting a woman with skin that’s dark and red-purple as good wine, with short colorless hair and eyes that are just a bit too round. Teeth that are just a bit too sharp. Blood all the way down her chin, spilling over her throat and all that bare sk–

The siren opens her mouth and sings again. Cold fingers of song touch Sarah’s throat and stroke over her ribcage.

“Cut that  _out_ ,” Sarah says, and rummages in her pocket to find a ha’penny. She chucks it at the siren’s face.

It hits. Startled, the siren blinks at Sarah (her eyelids go the wrong way) (there may be two sets of them) and then says in a polite, upper-crust English accent: “ _Excuse_  me?”

“It only works on men,” Sarah says. “Stop doing that. Makes my teeth hurt.”

The mermaid stares at Sarah and then comes closer. Her mouth is open, slightly (god her teeth are sharp), and this close Sarah can see the slits of gills opening and closing on her neck. “My, my,” the siren murmurs. “You aren’t a man at all, are you. And here I’d thought I’d never see your kind leave the shore.”

 _Come closer_ , Sarah begs her. There’s a knife in Sarah’s jacket pocket and if she’s quick enough, this can be over. But she has to be quick and the siren has to be close so instead she swallows and says: “I won’t be out here much longer if you keep killin’ the crew.”

“And what a shame that would be,” says the mermaid. The end of her tail flicks under the water, propelling her backwards. Sarah can see her chest – the lack of breasts, the dolphin-smooth skin. Then the siren submerges again, and all Sarah can see is the shimmering of purple lights. She clenches her hands so hard into the wooden post of the railing that a splinter sets her hand to bleeding.

The siren’s head comes back above water. She’s holding a severed arm with two hands and lowering her head to rip chunks of flesh free, chew, swallow. She takes bites the size of Sarah’s clenched fist; if Sarah pukes into the ocean again, she’ll never forgive herself.

“Can you,” she says. “Stop – stop eating them. God knows there’s a lot of ships out on the ocean, yeah?”

The siren stares at her. She opens her hands; the chunk of flesh that used to be an arm slides soundlessly back into the water.

“Hm,” the siren says. “And how does this bargain benefit me?”

Sarah has no idea, and it shows on her face. The siren tilts up the corner of her mouth into a smile; it bares a knifeblock of sharp teeth. “Sweet girl,” she says. “You’re so young. They never let girls like you out on the ocean anymore, do they?”

She bobs in place for a moment, in thought. “A kiss,” she says, “for each man you’d like to save.”

Sarah’s heart throttles her throat, for more than one reason.  _Yes_ bleeds into  _close enough to kill_ bleeds into  _her mouth her mouth her mouth_. “I,” she says. “What?”

Behind her, there’s a scuffle of a door open. “Wh–” says one of the sailors. “Where the hell’d–”

The siren sings again. Sarah pulls out another coin to throw at her face but she’s propelled herself out of the way, backwards, still singing a cold silver needle tapping against each one of Sarah’s teeth. 

The man’s over the railing on the other side, this time; he swims. The mermaid catches him. She presses her mouth to his throat and sinks her teeth in, slowly, gently, making eye contact with Sarah the entire time.

“Fine,” Sarah says, frantic and nauseous and – horrors – a little bit into it. “Let him go, Christ, I’ll bloody French kiss you if that’s what you want.”

There’s a high sound from the siren – something too silvery to be a growl –  but she lets the man go. He bobs in the water for a few dazed secondsand then starts paddling back towards her again.

“Honestly,” the mermaid sighs, and she flicks her tail up and slaps him backwards. Sarah throws down a rope ladder; dazed, he crawls back up and collapses shivering on the deck. His throat is an open wound.

“Bad dream, mate,” Sarah says, her voice shivering uneasily. “Go back to bed, yeah? Just – put a bandage on that first, or somethin’.”

He stumbles off, glassy-eyed. When Sarah turns around the mermaid is right on the other side of the ship, her eyes at the level of Sarah’s knees. “Do you care for him?” she says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. The lie wobbles a little bit on its way out.

“Hm,” says the siren. And then: “Well?”

“Well what.”

“I can’t come up there, can I?”

 _Oh fuck_ , says Sarah’s heart in one big thump. “Use the ladder,” she says.

“I’m rather lacking in legs, sweetheart.”

“I’m not coming down there.”

“I won’t kill you,” the siren says, sounding amused. “You’re the most interesting thing I’ve seen in ages. A woman? A woman willing to bargain? You’re a wonderful game. I wouldn’t spoil it.

“Besides,” she says helpfully, “I’m finished eating.” She propels herself backwards with her tail, and Sarah can see her grin of sharp teeth.

“It’s too cold,” Sarah says.

“I’ll put you back before you freeze.”

Sarah racks her brain wildly, says: “I can’t swim.”

“You won’t need to.”

“I n–”

“Are you forfeiting?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sarah hisses to herself, and slips through the railing so she can get one foot on the ladder.

“Oh, don’t,” the siren says. “Take the outer layer off first, you’ll be more buoyant.”

Sarah jolts with panic; her entire mind is focused on the knife in her pocket.

“Thought you said you wouldn’t let me drown,” she says.

The mermaid flicks her tail and goes under the surface. “Hello?” Sarah calls. Silence, and more silence, and then she hisses curses under her breath and shrugs out of her coat. The night air stabs into her the second it’s off, and her hands are clumsy and cold as she goes to move her knife to her trouser pocket.

“Not finished?” says the mermaid as she resurfaces.

Sarah fumbles; the knife goes spinning into the water, and the siren’s eyes go wide. She dives after it, resurfaces again with it cradled in one purple-black palm. “I like this,” she says. “A tooth you can keep in your hands. How novel.”

“I’ll take it back now,” Sarah says.

“Well,” says the mermaid. “Prove you deserve it.” She drops the knife back into the water; it sinks, and she cocks her head to one side. Her eyes don’t leave Sarah.

Sarah slowly pulls off her boots, and then her socks. The siren’s gaze flicks down to Sarah’s bare feet; her eyes go wide and curious.

“You know I don’t even know your name,” Sarah says, teeth chattering. (Mostly from cold.) “D’you have names? Is that a thing you lot do?” She moves her bare foot to the next ladder rung, and the next, and slowly inches her way closer to where the mermaid is circling and waiting for her.

“Rachel,” the siren says.

“ _Rachel?_ ” Sarah says. “Thought it’d be  _sharkkiller_ or somethin’.” She’s on the bottom rung.

“It was given to me,” Rachel says. “Jump now, sweetheart.”

Fuck it. Sarah lets go of the rungs and falls.

Rachel catches Sarah the second her head’s about to go underwater; that long tail wraps itself around Sarah’s legs, holding Sarah up and binding her. “There you are,” Rachel says, and leans forward to press her mouth against Sarah’s.

Her mouth tastes like metal, and her hands are cold and soft where she cups Sarah’s face. She flicks her tongue against Sarah’s mouth, a soft tease, and – god – fuck it – it’s a good kiss. Sarah reaches out her hands and strokes the slippery skin of Rachel’s shoulders, presses her palms to the strange geometry of Rachel’s shoulderblades. She licks against Rachel’s tongue and finds the edge of her tongue against Rachel’s teeth and Rachel doesn’t bite, doesn’t even scrape her teeth to draw Sarah’s blood. Her hands are under the water, now, feeling curiously along Sarah’s spine and tailbone and pressing up between Sarah’s legs–

And Sarah goes  _guh_  against Rachel’s mouth and spasms in the water. Rachel leans back, tilts her head to the side just a little bit. There’s a bone-rattling sound and Sarah’s brain goes  _Rachel is singing_ and then it goes  _Rachel’s mouth is closed_  and then she realizes it’s her teeth, chattering. She’s shaking all over.

Rachel’s hand is still on the inside of Sarah’s thigh. She presses it up again, the knuckle of her thumb digging in  _just_  right; Sarah lets out a shaking, guttural sound.

“You’re soft here,” Rachel says.

“Please,” Sarah says frantically. “P–please, please–”

Rachel sighs, and then there’s a huge splash and Sarah is over Rachel’s shoulder like a sack of flour. Rachel’s tail works itself under the water and then she ricochets out of the ocean, high enough to deposit Sarah neatly back on the deck. Rachel lands back in the water without even a splash. Her head is still tilted to one side.

“Put the skins on,” she says.

Sarah wraps herself in her coat and shakes and shakes and shakes. Eventually she talks her legs into working for her again, so she can stumble over to the pile of sailcloth and wrap herself in three more layers. It still takes her a long time to feel anything close to warm.

When she gets back, Rachel is gone. This is a relief, mostly because it should be a relief. Part of her is talking itself into feeling relieved, and part of her is chattering scraps of nonsense that basically amount to parts of Rachel’s body and then  _wow_. The last part of her waits until the others are mostly done and then says, calmly:  _you were supposed to kill her._

That hits Sarah like – well, not like cold water – and she’s struggling to not lose herself to her own guilt when her knife comes singing out of the sea and lands on the deck next to her. It spins in a circle.

Rachel surfaces again, her white hair plastered to her skull. “I’d say you’ve earned it,” she says, and her face lights up with a predator’s smile. “That’s one of your sailors saved, then.”

Fuck. Sarah forgot about the deal too, because she’s an idiot. Because she’s the worst. “I can’t–” she says. “I can’t go back in there.”

“I understand,” Rachel says. “You’re far too fragile. I wouldn’t ever.” Her tongue touches her teeth, and then she says: “Tomorrow night, then?”

Tomorrow night. Rachel will come back tomorrow night, and then. The last night. The last night? The very last one.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “Please.”

“You know,” Rachel says, “you never did tell me your name.”

“Sarah,” says Sarah. The word gutters out of her mouth in a whisper. She already regrets it.

“Sarah,” Rachel says. Her mouth works over the word like it’s a dessert she isn’t supposed to eat. “Good night, Sarah.”

“Night,” Sarah says weakly.

Rachel smiles those teeth at her one last time, and then goes under the water again.


	49. Siren/Sailor PART 2

Because Sarah is stupid, she comes back the next night. There’s a huddle of sailors up near the front of the boat, so she avoids them; instead she ducks round the back, off to the side, the place where yesterday she watched two men die.

But tonight’ll go different.

The first difference is Rachel flipping herself out of the water, her arms weaving between the railing-posts and her elbows hooking her in place. In the dim lantern-light of the boat her skin shines slick and soft. She looks like the night sky made touchable, only Sarah isn’t thinking about that.

“I was afraid you’d forgotten,” Rachel says. She doesn’t sound afraid. Mostly she sounds amused again.

Sarah crouches down, flops flat on her belly so her face is at the level of Rachel’s face. “You were convincing,” she tells Rachel’s teeth. 

“I can be,” Rachel says. She lifts a hand up, slightly, brushes a thumb against the smooth line of Sarah’s neck. Her hands are webbed, which Sarah didn’t notice last night. Then again she didn’t notice the claws either, so maybe that was all for the best.

“How many sailors on this ship?” Rachel murmurs. She’s splayed her whole hand against Sarah’s throat and is curling and uncurling her fingers, tenderly, the tips sliding cold and wet and soft against Sarah’s skin.

“I don’t know,” Sarah says. “Twelve?”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Rachel says. She hooks her hand around the back of Sarah’s neck, splays her fingers out and tangles them in Sarah’s hair. She isn’t saying anything. Her pupils are perfect circles, black and bottomless and huge.

Sarah leans forward, as much as she’s able to, so the ridges of the railings dig into the sides of her face. Then she kisses Rachel.

This time she keeps her eyes open, so she can watch Rachel’s eyes fluttering shut. The press of Rachel’s mouth is heady and insistent, like drinking wine and saltwater; Sarah gives into the impulse to touch Rachel’s jaw, her neck. She traces feather-light fingers over the edges of Rachel’s gills and Rachel lets out a choked breath that stutters over two or three seconds. Her whole body wriggles and shivers and then she curls in closer to Sarah, like she can’t help it.

Sarah keeps a hand on Rachel’s gills, teases her fingertips in and out of the slits in Rachel’s skin. Rachel is shaking and she keeps almost biting Sarah’s mouth, ripping off her lower lip, only she keeps catching herself. Her hand flops out of Sarah’s hair and grabs onto the railing again. God. It’s unbelievable, getting Rachel like this, taking her apart with her fingertips. Heady. Wine, saltwater.

Sarah closes her eyes and keeps kissing Rachel, almost angrily – she pulls Rachel’s lower lip between her teeth, rasps her tongue along the rust-and-salt taste of dried blood and Rachel’s skin. The seconds stretch out, dilate; maybe she’s been kissing Rachel for thirty years, and maybe it’s only been a moment. She doesn’t know. She wants this, badly, which is something she’s only now admitting to herself.

So she admits it. Then she opens her eyes again and slams her knifeblade into Rachel’s gills.

Rachel gargle-cough-chokes, reels backwards. Sarah’s knife is sticking out of the side of her neck, but she looks more surprised than injured. She opens her mouth (probably to say something pithy) but instead her mouth gapes open, shut, open, and then her body falls in one heavy slither down into the water. Her arms are the last to go; they slip loose from the railing, reach for Sarah for one second before the water takes them too. Splash.

Sarah shucks her boots and coat, checks the other side of the boat – no, they still haven’t noticed – probably drunk – and then she dives after Rachel into the sea.

She really hadn’t thought this through as much as she probably should have. The plan was 1. kiss Rachel 2. distract Rachel 3. stab Rachel 4. somehow get Rachel’s body into the brig. She might have to cut Rachel into pieces out here on the deck. She might have to lash her corpse to the anchor.

The water takes her like an all-over slap. Sarah opens her eyes, but can’t see anything – fuck – and she closes her eyes again, swims blindly down. She’s thrashing her hands out, whipping the water into a froth as she gropes and gropes and _finally_  finds a handful of slippery-rough scales.

There. Rachel’s tail and then her hips and then her elbow, there, Sarah grabs on tight and desperately kicks them back up towards the surface. Her lungs are scrabbling at her ribs, at the inside of her throat, shrieking at her in a pitch she hears with her whole body. When she opens her eyes a slit the ocean’s gone all silvery with blood. In the unreal purple radiance of Rachel’s skin, the blood shines like the surface of the moon. She can taste it, on her tongue: it tastes like cold.

Also, Rachel’s too heavy to get back up out of the water. Sarah kicks and kicks; the orange light of the surface doesn’t get any closer. It goes backwards, actually – it shrinks into itself like an eye lolling shut and her lungs are burning and she can’t think through the way her lungs are burning and the water isn’t cold anymore and her legs end at her knees because she can’t feel her feet and Rachel is so heavy, so heavy, until Sarah drops her – until Sarah lets Rachel go and thrashes towards the surface–

And a hand grabs Sarah’s elbow. Webbing. Claws. Rachel grabs for Sarah’s elbow and then her other elbow and then somehow she’s there, clawing her way up Sarah’s body, her tail twining around Sarah’s legs and then higher, to her arms, cocooning her, and Sarah opens her eyes and Rachel’s face looms towards her out of the perfect dark and Rachel grabs Sarah’s face in her hands and kisses her.

Everything tastes like cold blood. Sarah tries to gag, but Rachel’s grip is like a vise and it doesn’t let go of her. Instead the last of Sarah’s air bubbles escape in the space between them. Sarah’s whole body sputters. She thrashes; no dice. She thinks they’re sinking lower. She can’t tell.  _Fuck._ She’s so dizzy for air that she can’t even bear it. Her lungs are probably shutting down, and that’s why the world is starting to smother her like layers of cold cotton, and honestly? She doesn’t blame her lungs one bit. Her body is heavy. The surface is unreachable. Sarah is tired.

Sarah is too tired for another try at escape. Sarah is too tired to press her mouth closer to Rachel’s – Rachel’s tongue against Sarah’s lips, and her hands on Sarah’s throat. This deep down her palms feel almost warm. It’s an alright way to die, probably; it’s what Sarah deserves. She was an idiot who thought she could kill a siren all on her own and instead she’s going to die down here, and Rachel’s going to eat the flesh from her bones. She parts her lips for Rachel’s teeth.

Rachel’s mouth opens against Sarah’s like a night-blooming flower and Sarah can see it, already, the way Rachel would rip out Sarah’s carotid with her teeth and the bloom of blood in the dark dark water and she’s so busy thinking about that that when a burst of stale air fills her mouth she just breathes it in without thinking about it at all.

Then her lungs scream  _fuck!_  and  _more!_  and Sarah goes instinctively for more and there is no more and then she opens her eyes and stares at the flare of Rachel’s gills, the pull of water into them, the way one side is leaking plumes of silver blood into the water.

Fuck! More! and Sarah leans into Rachel’s mouth and kisses her back. She tugs Rachel’s lip between her teeth, sucks wet bloody air from Rachel’s mouth. Rachel makes some sound that vibrates through Sarah’s body; Sarah can’t hear it, though, Sarah can’t hear anything. Her whole body is cold. She can’t even feel it when her feet touch sand, and it’s only when disturbed sandgrains stings her palms that she snaps her eyes open and sees that they’ve reached some sort of bottom. Everything is black and impossible except maybe one foot around them where Rachel’s skin lights up the sand. Rachel’s the only real thing down here. Real because she’s breathing air into Sarah’s mouth, patiently, and real because outside of her there is nothing.

And obviously Rachel has realized this too, because when Sarah flicks her gaze back Rachel is just staring right at her. She blinks, slowly. Her eyelids go the wrong way, and Sarah knows, and Rachel knows that Sarah knows.

Rachel’s teeth sting into the skin of Sarah’s lip, piercing clean through, and then Rachel opens her mouth and hands and tail and lets Sarah go.

Sarah isn’t prepared for it, so some of the air goes stuttering out of her mouth and darts towards the surface. She follows it best she can, clawing up towards the faint orange dot of light. She sucks in water out of desperation, chokes, falters, keeps going higher. Her brain and body are screaming desperate and it doesn’t feel like she’s moving at all. It feels like she’s in a nightmare, and no matter how far she swims she’ll never make it anywhere.

When Rachel swims by her it seems like a joke. Then Rachel circles back around, flicks her tail, passes by Sarah like a shooting star in the dark, and Sarah realizes it is a joke. She’s the joke. The punchline is that there’s nothing Sarah can do, and she’s going to die down here.

The next time Rachel circles back around Sarah stops swimming, stares at her. Rachel slows. Down under the water every single movement she makes is elegant and purposeful and  _right_ , like swimming is the entire thing that she was made for. Her hair makes a white halo around her head, and her eyes are dark.

Sarah flips her off.

Rachel’s face splits open slowly and painfully into a smile, one that rips the edges of her mouth. She has an uncountable number of teeth; they glow cosmic colors in the blacklight as she hovers there, grinning and grinning.

Sarah closes her stiff fingers back into claws again and starts swimming. She doesn’t have the air for it, and she knows there’s no way she can make it. But she has to.

Rachel’s claws dig into the tender skin under Sarah’s arms and  _pull_ ; they go so fast it feels like flying, the water shoving at Sarah’s face and shoulders and throat and then she breaks the surface and breathes, breathes, breathes, breathes, breathes, breathes, breathes.

Air is good. Air is the very best thing, even though sucking in each breath burns. Her lower lip is on fire. Sarah presses her tongue to it and finds an uncountable number of puncture wounds –  _fuck_  – and then she takes her tongue away and focuses on breathing, treading water, not dying.

“You tried to kill me,” Rachel says conversationally. Sarah’s only listening to the noise her own gasping makes, so the words filter in by degrees.

“Money,” she croaks, and then coughs. Staying above water is an effort. Fuck, she’s tired.

“Money,” Rachel echoes. Either her voice is coming from somewhere else or Sarah’s ears are just broken. Who knows. “Am I that much of a threat?” Rachel says from somewhere behind Sarah or maybe underneath or maybe inside of her.

Sarah shakes her head and her wet hair slaps her in the face a bit. “Want the,” she says, and then just coughs for a bit. She heaves herself onto her back, floats. “The,” she says again, and then just coughs for a while. Dawn is scraping at the edges of the sky, and lying on her back like this Sarah realizes she can’t see the ship anywhere.

“What,” Rachel says. “What do they want.”

The last bit of salt water rips itself out of Sarah’s lungs. “Y’r scales make people well,” she says. “Bones for youth. Throat for harp strings. People want your eyes so they can make better glasses. And your heart…” she stops. There aren’t any clouds in the sky, but above her the air is redder than it was before. The sun.

“My heart,” Rachel says.

“Don’t remember,” Sarah says, and that’s a lie.

“And what would you do,” Rachel says softly. “If you sold me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve lost your knife.”

“Yeah.”

“I should leave you here.”

“Probably.” Sarah tilts her head back and forth and realizes she can’t see the ship anywhere. “Where’s my ship.”

“Due east.”

There isn’t anything to the east. Then again there’s nothing to the west, so who knows. Maybe they’ve been down under the water for a hundred years, and everyone Sarah knows is dead.

She lets her body fall back into the water and treads it – running without going anywhere. Rachel is floating next to her, head tilted slightly to the side with polite curiosity. Sarah’s blood is smeared all over her mouth. From an instinct Sarah doesn’t quite understand, she reaches out her thumb and wipes the blood off. Pops the tip of her thumb into her mouth, tastes.

“Are you going to take me back,” she says, afterwards.

“Will you try it again?” Rachel says. “Killing me. Piecing me out into parts and selling them for what you can get.”

 _I’d eat your heart_ , Sarah tells her, only she opens her mouth and says: “I might.”

Rachel stares at her, calculating.  _I wouldn’t let anyone else touch it_ , Sarah tells her.  _I’d eat it raw and warm. Do you know what that means? Can you tell me?_

Rachel ducks down under the water; when she resurfaces she’s close enough to drape Sarah’s arm over her shoulders. Rachel starts swimming, pulling Sarah along like deadweight.

Sarah lolls her head onto Rachel’s shoulder. She’s so tired. When she closes her eyes she’s back in the dark, and Rachel says  _I understand_  and Rachel says  _I would eat the entirety of you, but I would begin with your heart._

 _That’s good_ , Sarah says. She opens her eyes again and watches as they get closer, closer, closer to the rising sun.


	50. Lamia

Zeus’ skin had burned to the touch, but pleasantly. When Rachel had slid her palms against his bare chest it felt like ozone – or a sip of too-warm tea – or other pleasures she’s since forgotten. He burned her, all over. It was dizzying. She’d wanted to feel it forever, which is of course why she was stupid enough to sleep with him in the first place. Power. Promises. He’d said that she could join him on Olympus – that she was beautiful enough, smart enough. She used to dream about being the goddess of vengeance. In her dreams, they wrote songs about her.

She’s stopped dreaming. In that she’s stopped believing in a future, and that sleeping is like falling into the parts of the night sky where there are no stars.

When she wakes, things are still dark. Also: she’s starving.

Rachel has no idea where she is, but she never does these days. She opens her mouth, licks at the air with a forked tongue, tastes: stone, dust, age, dark. She’d crawled into a cellar, yesterday, if it was yesterday, if it wasn’t two hours ago, if she was allowed to know anything anymore. She reaches up and feels the cool and uneven bricks. A string of drool makes it languorous way down her chin and unrolls itself, slowly, down her bare breasts. Down further – and then to the scales of her tail, and Rachel stops feeling it entirely.

She uncurls herself and feels along the stone. Further. It grows warmer, slightly, and Rachel crawls along the ground towards the promise of the sun. Her tail drags itself in the dust behind her until she flicks it and begins to writhe, serpentine, out of the cellar and onto the warm grass.

It might be summer.

She opens her mouth again, tastes. Sweet grass, sweeter pollen, the patient ambivalence of trees. On the very edge of her tongue: milk, honey, bone.

She drags herself towards it.

Hera had killed Charlotte in front of her – which, in retrospect, seems a bit excessive. Leda also touched her bare palms to Zeus’ lightning-chest and received no punishment for it, only the swell of swan’s eggs in her belly. But for Rachel – but for what Rachel wanted, and what she wasn’t allowed to take – for her ambition – for Rachel’s unbearable ambition, Hera had reached towards Rachel’s daughter and–

 

 

 

 

Her tongue tastes stone and wood and glass and faint perfume and the sleeping breaths of a child. Rachel reaches out and traces her hands along the outside of the house until she finds a window; she finds the latch, she opens it, she pulls herself up onto the windowsill. The lower half of her body drags in the dirt. The taste of innocence on her tongue becomes unmanageable, and her chin and throat are slick with the drool she can never manage to stop.

In through the window. Head first, then arms; she pulls her tail in slowly, by degrees. Her mouth hangs open, and further open, and her nails dig into the floor, and she drags herself towards the bed–

And something heavy and metal clocks her in the skull, and she screams. Her head rings like a gong. A child starts screaming, a piercing wail that is not at all a harmony. Above the sound of screaming and Rachel’s animal horror-sound, a voice yells: “Get out! Get the hell out of here or I’ll hit you again!”

Rachel can feel the pitch of her scream change, and she pushes her hands against the ground to rear herself up to her full height. The back of her head brushes against the ceiling. She screams again; she bares all of her needle teeth.

The shape whacks her in the stomach. It’s round. It may or may not be a frying pan. The breath leaves Rachel in an undignified wheeze. She falls to the floor.

“Mom, stop!” says a voice that is not Charlotte’s. “She isn’t going to hurt me.”

“Monkey,” says the voice of a grown woman, “I need you to get out of the room, okay? Go in the bathroom and lock the door.”

“ _Mom!_ ”

“Kira,” says the mother. “Go. Now.”

The sound of feet hitting the floor. Rachel’s tongue flicks out, tastes movement: the child was in the bed, and now she is not in the bed. Her mother is standing between her and Rachel, until the child ducks around her mother and crouches by Rachel’s face.

“What happened to you?” she says softly.

Rachel opens her mouth to scream again and instead she starts laughing. She doesn’t mean to. She hasn’t laughed, since

and the sound now doesn’t resemble any of the polite noises she was taught to make as a girl. Instead she laughs in soggy, horrified chunks. It sounds like crying. She thought she’d forgotten how to do that too.

Her tongue tastes and her scales feel and and they tell her that the mother has pulled Kira away, is pulling her away, is taking her away from Rachel. Rachel is still laughing. Her head hurts. She lies there and lets Kira run away, lets Kira’s mother come back into the room.

“Your little girl is very brave,” Rachel tells h–

That’s a funny joke.

She doesn’t say that at all. What she does is open her mouth and say  _yaaaaliguhlssssaahhhrv_. Then she curls her hand into a fist, and bangs it against the ground.

“Shut up,” says Kira’s mother.

Rachel screams against the floorboards. She digs her claws in, further and then further. Her mouth says  _hhhhhsssshshhssssshshhhshshhhhhhhhh_ and is useless.

A bare foot nudges her in the side, and Rachel stops throwing her embarrassing tantrum. 

“What the hell are you,” says Kira’s mother, in a quiet voice.

Rachel used to be all sorts of things. Now she doesn’t know what she is.  _If you’re going to kill me you may as well_ , she wants to say, but of course she can’t speak like a person anymore.

She raises herself up slowly, wary of frying pans. Once vertical she tastes the air again, gets back sweat and iron and skin. She’s starving, but that isn’t what she’s starving for. Realistically she knows that she isn’t starving for children either. But what she wants is unattainable, so.

“Hey,” says Kira’s mother. “Can you – can you understand me?”

Rachel nods.

“Can you speak.”

“Nnn,” Rachel says. “Nnnoth. Uuuheall.” She coils up smaller, frustrated and embarrassed and furious and terrified.

“What are you,” Kira’s mother says. “What the hell are you and why are you in my daughter’s bedroom and what do you want and – and – what the  _hell_  are you.”

Rachel pulls one arm out of the coil, digs her claws into the floorboards and slowly carves out an R. Then A. Then C H E L – and she has to splay her hand against the floor, for a moment, for the dizzying reminder that she exists.

“Rachel,” says Kira’s mother. When she gets no response from Rachel, she says: “I’m – Sarah.” When that gives her nothing either, she says: “Can you answer the other ones.” She pauses, and then grudgingly adds: “Please.”

Rachel pulls herself up, rests one folded arm on the pile of her coils and rests her head on her arms. With the nails of her other hand, she carves into the floor:

I AM A MONSTER. I MISS MY DAUGHTER.

Then:

KIRA IS BRAVE.

 _And I want to eat her_ , but she doesn’t say that. Is that what she wants? She doesn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says. “Sorry you lost her, but – I’d kill you, ‘fore I let you touch Kira. You can’t just take someone else’s daughter, that’s not – that’s stupid. You can’t.”

It’s much worse than stupid. They both know that. Rachel sits there with that knowledge; she closes her eyes, and the strange uneasy rhythm of her brand-new heart pounds in time with the empty pangs of her stomach.

“Are you going to eat me,” Sarah says.

“Nnn. No.”

“Good,” Sarah says. “This thing’s heavy as shit.” The frying pan touches the floor, and Sarah follows it. Her face is level with Rachel’s. “I don’t know how to do this,” Sarah says. “Kira – she’s – she’s amazing, better than I am, she’d know how to make you her new best friend. She’d make you a bloody bracelet or somethin’. I don’t know what the hell I’m doin’, talking to you.”

Rachel lifts a bare shoulder, lets it fall slowly. She wishes – not for the first time – that she could still see. Just so she could understand the strangeness of a woman hitting her with a frying pan and then sitting down on the floor next to her instead of finishing the job.

Instead Rachel flails a hand out blindly into space, connects with the (warm) (warm) (warm) warm shape of a knee. Sarah’s sitting cross-legged. She feels along Sarah’s leg, finds an arm, walks her fingers along that too. Pauses at Sarah’s shoulder. She can’t tell if Sarah is too stiff and Sarah’s breathing is too heavy or if Rachel has just forgotten how people are supposed to be. Which is worse?

“Can I,” she says, slow and garbled.

“Can you what,” Sarah says. Her heartbeat knocks itself faster against her shoulderbones. Rachel lifts her other arm, spreads her fingers against her face. She feels the familiar aristocratic curve of her nose, the edge of the holes where her eyes used to be, the aching sharp stretch of her tooth-filled mouth.

“Okay,” Sarah says roughly. Rachel breathes in long, shallow exhalations, sifts Sarah across her tongue as she brushes the pads of her fingers across Sarah’s face. Rough skin. The nose is curved, the lips are chapped. Sarah’s breath comes in warm, hasty puffs against Rachel’s fingertips. The cheekbones – skirt around the eyes – the hairline. Her hair is long, tangled, dry. 

“You don’t know what you look like,” Sarah says. Her voice is still rough. 

Rachel knows. She loops some of Sarah’s hair over her knuckles, digs the claws of her other hand into the floorboards and sketches out the shape of a woman with a lamprey mouth, a skeletal ribcage, a long and undulating tail. After she’s done she presses the pads of her fingers to it and hates it.

“You’re a shitty artist,” Sarah says, sounding almost amused. “Your tits are smaller, for one thing.”

For the second time that night, Rachel laughs. This time it’s more huffs of breath than anything – but it’s ridiculous, it’s all so ridiculous. In another lifetime she could paint the individual eyelashes onto a portrait, and she knew the exact size of her tits. Now she’s here.

She brushes a palm along the cold, smooth curve of her breast; she untangles her other hand from Sarah’s hair and cups Sarah’s breast.

“Hey!” Sarah yelps, the sound high and breathy. “Hey, whoa, buy – buy me dinner first, yeah? Can you – Christ, that’s – alright. Shit.”

Rachel lifts her hand, digs her claw into the floorboard. MINE ARE BIGGER.

“Fuck you.”

Rachel underlines it. 

Sarah snorts, murmurs: “Piss off.” She pulls in a breath – lets it out – pulls in another one – says: “Your scales are gold.”

Rachel’s tail coils up underneath her, and she huddles further into the basket of herself. There isn’t anything to say to that. She hadn’t known her scales were gold.

“D’you know what gold is.”

Rachel feels out fingertips along the floorboards, finds her own scratched-out letters. Crosses out AM, writes above it: WASN’T ALWAYS.

“Ah,” Sarah says. “Shit.”

GODS.

“Bastards.”

Rachel nods. She’s startled by a flicker near her ear, the soft warm brush of Sarah’s fingers tucking Rachel’s hair back.

“Lucky you,” Sarah says. “You’re still pretty. Must’ve been a real looker before, yeah?”

She was, which was the problem. The riverbank – and Zeus, by the riverbank – and Sarah’s hand hasn’t moved, it’s still (warm) against Rachel’s chin.

“Rachel,” Sarah says. 

Rachel tilts her head towards the sound of Sarah’s voice; if it nudges her chin further into Sarah’s palm, that’s coincidence.

“Were you really going to hurt my kid,” Sarah says.

Rachel doesn’t move, or say anything – which is its own answer, and also the wrong answer.

“If I let you leave,” Sarah says, voice rough and stumbling, “are you gonna hurt someone else’s kid.”

Gods help both of them: Rachel drools, slightly, into the bowl of Sarah’s hand.  _I want_ , she says, and  _I wanted_ , and  _you don’t understand, you couldn’t possibly understand. I’ve only been a person for two minutes. When I came in through the window, I was a monster. When I leave I will be a monster again. What else could I do?_

After all of that: she nods.

“Don’t,” Sarah says. She sounds frustrated, and terrified. “Just – don’t.”

HUNGRY.

“Eat a bloody deer then!”

Rachel jabs her finger into I MISS MY DAUGHTER. Then again, and again, and again, and she starts pounding the palm of her hand frantically against the ground. She misses Charlotte. Charlotte’s braids, and the rocks she would pile into her pockets, and her limp and her smile and her endless curiosities–

Sarah’s hands slap Rachel’s palms against the ground and Rachel opens her mouth, screams. This time it only sounds like grief. Grief wailing on, and on, and on, until Sarah’s (warm) palms clap to either side of Rachel’s face.

“I know,” Sarah says. “I know. I know. I get it. You hear me? I know.”

She doesn’t know. Kira is behind the bathroom door, tucked away safe; Rachel can’t come down from the heavens, Rachel can’t take Kira’s neck

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rachel can’t take Kira’s neck between her hands and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the way Charlotte had looked at Rachel, her eyes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the sound was so quiet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

like a twig breaking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and so warm, only it wasn’t warm, that was when Rachel still had warm blood and so mostly she had felt cold. All over. In her entirety. Her last seconds of warm blood, wasted, why does she remember it as warm, she doesn’t, Sarah’s face is pressed against her face, Sarah’s cheek against her cheek. Rachel is a monster. She misses her daughter. Sarah is brave – stupidly brave, brave enough to come too close. 

 _I can’t even say her name anymore_ , Rachel says, inside and wrapped around her low scream of unceasing grief.  _Isn’t that funny? It’s the shh- sound. The letter r. I can’t quite manage it_. She fumbles for the fabric of Sarah’s shirt, knots her fingers into it. She would do this for Charlotte, when.

“I know,” Sarah says.

When Charlotte would fall down and scrape her knee, or when the other children were cruel,

“I know.”

And she would come to Rachel, her mother, the one person she trusted to protect her, and Rachel would whisper  _I won’t let them do this to you, I won’t let the world do this to you, someday I will find–_

“I know.”

–and Zeus by the riverbank–

–and Rachel, here, now, pulling Sarah closer, holding on to her. Sarah rubs circles against Rachel’s bare monster-spine. Her hands are rough and calloused. 

“If I lost her,” Sarah whispers, “I’d go mad.”

“I,” Rachel says. “I knnnnow.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “I bet you know all about it.”

Rachel leans back; Sarah lets go of her, slowly. Rachel presses the tip of one claw against the floorboard, writes:

I WON’T

crosses out WON’T, writes WILL TRY NOT TO

and then stops.

HER NAME WAS CHARLOTTE.

She touches the pads of her fingers to Charlotte’s name, touching it. Gently.

LOOK AFTER KIRA, she says.

“Yeah,” Sarah says. “I know. She’s the most – she’s the only – yeah.”

Rachel nods. She reaches out and maps her way up Sarah, again, settling her hand against Sarah’s cheek. Lowers her hand back to the floor. Spreads her fingers against the words: I WILL TRY NOT TO

“Thank you,” Sarah says. 

“Hhh,” Rachel says. “Ank. You.”

“I didn’t,” Sarah says. “I didn’t do anything, I – you’re welcome. Yeah. You’re – you’re welcome.”

Rachel uncoils, stretches herself back up so she can press the palms of her hands against the ceiling. She sweeps her tail back and forth; her (gold) scales send dust eddying up from the floor.

“Rachel,” Sarah says.

“Ssssaaaah.”

“You can come back.”

Rachel pulls herself back to the floor, stares in the direction of Sarah. When she flicks out her tongue she can taste sweat, and skin, but she can’t taste truth at all. She doesn’t know what it would even taste like.

She just nods. There isn’t anything else to say, and if there was she couldn’t say it anyways. She just feels her way along the unmarked floorboards to the windowsill. She can feel her tail dragging behind her, and for a moment she knocks the tip of it against Sarah’s leg. She can’t say  _sorry_ , and also she can’t say sorry. Instead she pulls herself out into the grass; the next time she flicks her tongue out, she barely tastes Sarah at all. The next time even less. And less, and less, and less, and she slithers away from the metal and glass and further towards the trees. She makes her way deep into the forest. When she finds a deer, she kills it and she eats it.


	51. Ballerina/Skateboarder

Rachel keeps watching the girl skateboarding in the parking lot of Rachel’s ballet studio. She is watching purely for aesthetic reasons. Rachel is used to raising herself up to an impossible point and freezing, perfectly posed, for unbearable seconds; she understands effort, and the ways you have to push your body to make it move. The way the stranger twists herself to steer the board in endless turns around imaginary obstacles – the precise placement of her feet – Rachel understands that. She appreciates the motion of it.

It isn’t for any other reason.

She doesn’t even know what the girl looks like. There’s only a cloud of brown hair, ripped jeans, cut-off tops that show off the tanned skin of her stomach. She could look like anything. Not that Rachel cares about it.

The other girls don’t care either. On the rare breaks where they feel like leaving the studio – although there isn’t much enjoyment to be had sitting on the concrete ramp outside of the building, flexing their bruised toes and curving their legs into arches and angles – they barely even pay attention to her. They sit, all of them, Rachel’s fellow cygnets – all white leotards, white tights, white slippers. Eyes all on each other, not across the parking lot.

Rachel’s eyes are there, though.

For aesthetic purposes.

The other girls prattle on about who will get which part, who is sleeping with whose brother, who is winning at this very second, and Rachel points her toe out like a perfectly-made arrow – hooks her arms over the railing – watches. Her. Watches her. Watches her leap up in the air, send her board spinning, catch the right side of it with her feet and land with all four wheels on the ground. She coasts in an idle circle and then shoves that great pile of hair out of her face with both hands–

Sees the girls sitting outside of the studio. Stumbles. Catches herself, but doesn’t catch the board; it goes shooting off across the parking lot, banging against the wheel of Evie’s car and barreling towards nowhere in particular. One of the other girls snickers under her breath, whispers something. They all whisper to each other. Rachel doesn’t whisper – she meets the eyes of the girl standing there in the middle of the parking lot.

Her eyes are brown.

Also, she’s beautiful.

Objectively. Aesthetically.

Then she raises up two fingers to Rachel in what is definitely not a salute, and jogs after her skateboard. Her shoulders are hunched up near her ears; she looks as prickly and furious as a thunderstorm in dry weather. 

The bell on the studio door rings to itself as everyone begins to head back inside. Rachel stands up, stretches out the jangled muscles of her legs, reaches for the door handle – and then, out of some impulse, turns back around. Her feet twist nervously towards fourth position; she cups hands in front of her dry lips, yells across the parking lot: “You’re very talented.”

“Fuck you,” yells the girl on the other side of the lot. Her shoulders jam up even higher, and she grabs the skateboard in one white-knuckled fist.

Rachel finds her face crunching itself up into a frown. She ducks under the railing, off the ramp and onto the warm rough asphalt of the parking lot. (It burns her feet, through her thin thin shoes.) It seems to take forever for her to cross. By now the music has already started; someone will have murmured something condescending and kind about Rachel’s need to grab something out of her car, for  _that time_  of the month. Her car is in its usual corner, silver and sleek. She goes the opposite way.

“I meant it,” she says, when she gets close enough.

“Great,” says the girl with the skateboard. “You didn’t have to walk all the way over here to say that.”

“You weren’t listening.”

The stranger makes a sound like  _hhhsh_  through her teeth. She has the skateboard back on the ground, under one foot, and she pushes it back and forth nervously. While staring at Rachel. Her eyes really are extraordinarily brown. Rachel’s brown eyes have always felt plain, and she’s thinking too much about this.

“I appreciate,” Rachel says, “that you’re capable of making mistakes without swearing off the sport entirely. It’s refreshing.”

The girl snorts. “Yeah,” she says. “They seem like they’d whine a lot.” Her eyes on Rachel are coolly appraising; her easy separation of Rachel from her entire flock makes Rachel giddy, buoyant. Like this girl has singlehandedly cast Rachel in every lead. Rachel usually dances background roles and supporting parts, even though she’s talented – she’s still too young, apparently. Someday she’ll be alone in the unfeeling light of the spotlight, but not yet.

…and this girl cares about none of this whatsoever. “They do,” Rachel says, desperate to keep talking, desperate to keep existing as this version of herself who stands alone in a black parking lot with a black-dressed girl and doesn’t feel alone or terrified.

“We’ve lost half of the corps to tantrums,” she says, her voice fluting and unbearably young.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“The ones who aren’t very good.”

And then the girl smiles, and her teeth are white, and when she smiles her skin crinkles up slightly around her eyes. “You’re good, then?” she says.

“Yes,” Rachel says. Yes, and it’s true.

“You should show me somethin’,” says the girl with the skateboard. “Sometime. Not now, I bet they’re missing you.”

“Yes,” Rachel says, again, stupidly. Her hand twitches upwards to tuck her hair behind her ear, and she manages just in time to hold it out instead. Not that a handshake is even remotely better, her brain screams at her; not that there is anything less embarrassing about her hand thrust forward into space.

The girl takes it. Her hands are sun-touched, warm.

“Rachel Duncan,” Rachel says.

“Sarah,” says Sarah. “You’ve got a hell of a handshake.”

“So I’ve heard,” Rachel says, and drops Sarah’s hand before her face flares red and she buries herself in the asphalt. She wants to say  _watch me_  and raise herself up on one foot, spin around and around and around and around infinitely. Instead she places one foot behind her, and then another, and then slowly – sedately – turns around and walks back to the studio. She doesn’t look behind her. (Her hand is still warm.)

She dances with nearly immaculate skill. Her arms sketch architectural curves and her legs echo them and she stays precisely on time in the line and she is thinking about, she is thinking about, she is thinking about nothing in particular and also the way the girl (Sarah)’s stomach would feel if Rachel reached out a palm and touched it. Like asphalt, only soft. The pulse of her breathing. Sarah. Unbearable.

And it’s not that she’s disappointed that Sarah isn’t there when the studio lets out. It’s dark by then, anyways.

She wasn’t expecting anything.

Rachel isn’t expecting anything when she arrives for her next class, either, which is why she isn’t disappointed when she pulls into the lot and all of the girls there are dressed in white. It’s actually very easy to not be disappointed. She has plenty of practice.

She practices while she warms up, while she dances, while she walks to the door for their break. Rachel has always been excellent at this, and it’s only getting easier, and when she opens the door and the parking lot is empty it’s ridiculously easy to feel absolutely nothing at all.

She doesn’t feel anything the next day, or the next one, or the next one, and then she pulls her car into the lot and Sarah is sitting on her skateboard texting intently on her phone and Rachel feels–

 

Sarah jumps when Rachel pushes the car door shut, and the skateboard scoots merrily a few extra inches before Sarah stands up and stops it with one black boot foot. “D’you always get here ‘fore everyone else?” she calls across the lot.

“I do,” Rachel calls back. She lets her duffle bang against her leg. She shows up half an hour before class because she feels stupid arriving late – stupid pulling off her legwarmers – stupid having to stretch with all of the others. (She’s better.) But that means she’s even stupider, standing here, her street shoes and her wrap and her legwarmers and all of it stupid and out of place here under the blank unforgiving glare of the sky.

Sarah pushes herself across the lot; Rachel doesn’t know when she got on the board but she’s on it and she’s – it’s the moment in last fall’s show where Marion leapt and hung suspended in the air under the spotlight and Rachel thought  _mine_ , Rachel thought  _that’s mine_. She looks at the way that Sarah and her banged-up skateboard are exactly the same effortless animal and she thinks:  _that’s mine_.

Sarah brings the skateboard to a scuffing halt in front of Rachel. “Hi,” she says.

“You weren’t here yesterday,” Rachel says, like an idiot.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“You should be.”

Sarah pulls one dry-looking lip between her teeth, sucks on it; her eyes go skittering around the lot and then back to Rachel. “So,” she says. “Are you gonna, I mean – I don’t know how this shit works, d’you need a special floor or somethin’.”

Yes.

“Yes,” Rachel says. “And proper shoes, and I need to have stretched.” Her feet itch nervously towards first position; Rachel doesn’t let them. Her heart rattles around. “I wanted to see you,” she says – forced out between her teeth. She swallows. “May I?”

“I’m right h–” Sarah says, and then her face flushes in patches. “You wanted to see me – you mean.” One foot finds the board again, instinctively, pushes it back and forth. 

“I told you,” Rachel says. “You’re very talented.”

“I’m not,” Sarah says. “It’s just a laugh.”

“It isn’t.”

Sarah puffs out a breath of air. “I don’t usually have an audience, yeah?”

“Sometimes you do,” Rachel says. She drops her duffle, folds herself down on top of it. Her legs cross neatly at the ankles out of instinct. “Now, for instance.”

“If I fall off,” Sarah says, “you’d better not laugh.”

“I won’t.”

Sarah mutters something foul to herself and then pushes off, glides in an uneasy circle and then abruptly pushes one foot against the ground, flies faster. She’s a carrion crow in the parking lot, wheeling aimlessly, pushing off the ground and twisting her skateboard under her feet once – twice – and then landing on it again. Rachel folds herself in tighter and watches. She watches the concentrated effort it takes to bounce the board off of the wall of the building; she watches the smile cracking slowly across Sarah’s face.  _It’s just a laugh_ , Sarah had said, but she’d lied.

Sarah flies back and forth across the parking lot; after a minute or two, she begins to show off. It’s cute. It gives Rachel time to look at Sarah’s hands, her feet, the flat taut plane of her stomach. It gives Rachel time to look at Sarah.

Eventually Sarah brings herself to a halt in front of Rachel and gives an oversized, mocking bow. She’s laughing; she’s breathless. She drops down next to Rachel on the ground and her hair is tangled up by wind and her legs are sprawled absolutely everywhere and her skateboard has rolled up to nudge against her like an anxious puppy and it’s really very easy, at the end of the day, for Rachel to close the gap between them and kiss her.

Sarah’s mouth tastes like wind.

Rachel leans back again.  _Oh_ , she thinks to herself:  _stupid girl_. Sarah’s staring at her goggle-eyed and her tongue flicks out again to press against her lips.

“Wow,” Sarah says. “Uh, shit.”

Rachel scrambles herself up to standing, slings her bag over one shoulder, walks away. Stupid girl stupid girl stupid girl stupid. She scuffs her terrible street shoes against the ground, thinks about Sarah out in this parking lot for hours and hours trying to learn how to master just one jump, just one trick–

And Sarah’s in front of Rachel, on her skateboard. She grabs out wildly for Rachel’s upper arms, finds purchase, leans forward and down to kiss Rachel. She seems very determined; her mouth is a solid press, her grasp is insistent. Rachel reaches up to cup Sarah’s face with one hand.

“Don’t,” Sarah says roughly, pressing her forehead to Rachel. “Sorry. Screwed up, I’ve got a habit of it. Just – hey. Don’t, don’t run off, I still haven’t seen you dance.”

“I’m not the lead,” Rachel says (stupidly). She isn’t even thinking about that; she’s thinking about the feeling in her stomach, which feels the way she’d imagined it would feel when people threw roses onto the stage only and entirely for her.

“I don’t even know what that means,” Sarah says helplessly. Rachel lets out a stuttering and slightly hysterical breath through her nose and then kisses Sarah again, softer, longer.

“I have the key to the studio,” she says, afterwards. “If you’re willing to wait around.”

“God,” Sarah says. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Yeah.” She kisses Rachel again. The pit of Rachel’s stomach is an audience clapping for her, standing and cheering and clapping for her. The feeling lasts through warming up, through the pangs of envy and the frustrations and the joys of a class. None of it touches her. She’s thinking about Sarah, flying.

Afterwards she stays late and stretches out slowly; she relishes the burn of her muscles pulling into place. The teacher stares at her with an odd expression – but leaves her there, in the endless hall of mirrors reflecting Rachel back at Rachel forever.

One final twist of her neck – slow, don’t rush, stay loose – and she walks (slow) (don’t rush) to the door. Opens it. Outside the sun is going down; the air is the color of rust. Under the flickering streetlights Sarah is riding, turning herself in slow precise circles on top of her skateboard. Rachel waits until Sarah stops to say her name.

The studio seems strangely dull, with only Rachel and Sarah in it – the floor is scuffed, the barres are dinged and notched from too many clumsy feet. Rachel crosses from the tile floor to the sprung floor and watches Sarah inch her careful way into the building.

“I’ve never been in here,” Sarah says.

 _I know_ , Rachel says.

“Shoes off,” she says. She pushes her feet into first – second – third – and watches Sarah toe her boots off, stand there, watch. She feels her heart scrabble its way up towards her throat. She thinks about the way Sarah had decided to be good at something and then was just – good at it, excellent at it, the way she was excellent like it was easy.

“It isn’t much,” Rachel says.

“Doubt it,” Sarah says. She walks over to one of the walls, puts her back to the endless mirror and slides down to the floor. Her elbows hook over her folded knees. She watches Rachel like Rachel is something amazing. Rachel’s heart climbs out of her throat, out of her mouth; it sprouts wings and flies away, and Rachel puts her feet into first position and begins.

She puts herself through all of her paces. The arabesque, the pirouette, the leap; the steady machinery of being spectacular. She tries to explain with her hips and the tips of her fingers what it had been like to see Sarah out there, what it had meant. The air is absolutely silent except for the scuffing of Rachel’s feet on the floor. When she balances on one toe and reaches a hand towards the lights, she realizes they’re closer than they’ve ever been.

 _Oh_ , she thinks,  _that’s it_. She lowers her hand. She repeats Sarah’s earlier, mocking bow – but there’s no heart in it. She’s drained. She’s done it.

“God,” Sarah says, when Rachel stops. “Holy shit. Christ.”

“I hope it was worth it,” Rachel says. She crosses the floor and folds her legs underneath her, sits next to Sarah.  _Please_ , she says, with her hips and the tips of her fingers.

Sarah lets out a gasp of a laugh. “Yeah,” she says. Rachel feels her lips pressing tight together to keep from grinning – an enormous, exultant grin. One that would pull her face wide open.

Sarah makes that grin instead; she leans forward, cups the back of Rachel’s head gently in one hand. “Can I,” she says.

“Yes,” Rachel says, the word tumbling out of her mouth desperately. Sarah leans forward – Rachel leans forward – and somehow, even inside this skyless studio, Sarah’s mouth still tastes like wind.


End file.
